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thetriumphantpanda · 7 months

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reach out, touch faith

In The Woods Somewhere | Chapter Three

Chapter Summary | Trusting Joel to take you to the place he calls home is difficult, but it's your only real choice now. It brings back memories of the last time you trusted someone enough to follow them, and look how that turned out?

Chapter Warnings | Canon-typical violence, mentions & allusions to child death, mentions of PTSD, descriptions of & allusions to cult activities, soft!Joel, protective!Joel, pining, strained parental relationships, no use of y/n, italics indicate a flashback scene.

Pairing | Joel Miller x F!Reader

Word Count | 3.3K

Authors Note | Thank you for being so patience in waiting for this next part. I've rekindled my love for this little series and I'm excited to show you more of what's coming with this little band of travellers. If you enjoyed then please consider leaving comments, reblogging or popping into my ask box with your thoughts! And if you enjoyed, please consider supporting me with a tip through my Ko-Fi.

A reminder that I no longer use taglists - please follow @thetriumphantpandanotifs and turn on post notifications to know when I post new writing.

Series Masterlist | Main Masterlist | Ko-Fi

Joel doesn’t really know what to do. He’s never been the best at consoling people, especially people he doesn’t really know. What’s he supposed to do? The way you’ve flinched at him every time he’s tried to touch you suggests that trying to hug you is probably going to make things worse. He’s still reeling from the information you’ve just thrown at him, and it somehow makes the situation worse. He was yours. How the hell is he meant to make this better now? Sure, anyone’s child dying is the worst thing that can happen, pure innocence snuffed out and for what reason? But the fact that Edward was yours, your flesh and blood, it's so much worse. He can yet again feel his own panic rising as your sobs continue, tears streaming down your face, hands shaking. He simply doesn’t know what to do.

“Hey,” He says softly, shaking your knees with his hands, “Hey, just look at me for a second, okay?”

You don’t, you just stare blankly into the fire behind his shoulder as you cry, so he moves his head into your eyeline, searching your eyes with his own, “Hey, can I touch you?” He asks, realizing as soon as the words have left his mouth how bad that must sound, “Just let me hug you, okay?”

When you don’t move away from him or tell him otherwise, he moves forward a little, moving tentatively so as not to spook you. He gently moves one hand to rest at your head, pulling your wet, puffy face to the crook of his neck, his other arm moving around your back. He stays like that for as long as you need, palm running over your hair, the other still on your back to try and ground you. Soon, the racking sobs have stopped, you’re silent now. And then he feels your arms wrap around him. He’s too broad for your hands to meet around his back, but your hands rest behind him as you soothe yourself.

“I’m tired,” You mumble into the skin of his neck, breath ghosting against him, “I’m so fucking tired Joel.”

He thinks that you perhaps might not just mean tonight – thinks you might be tired of it all, and he understands, because for so long he was tired too. He chooses to work with the immediate though. He ignores the screaming of his knees and his back as he scoops you up, walking slowly to the room you’d claimed as your own, careful not to knock your head on the door frame as he walks in. When he sets you down gently onto the bed, you’re already mostly asleep. It’s cold in here, he thinks, so he peels back the covers and drapes them over your body, and then takes his jacket off for good measure and places it on top of the sheets.

He wants to turn and leave, leave you in peace, give your privacy, but if his experience is anything to go by, these nights will be the darkest. You’ll dream about it, over and over again, replay everything that went wrong, every other possible way this could have ended. You’ll wake up in a cold sweat, screaming, then struggle to get back to sleep. He doesn’t know what brought you here, but he sure as hell knows it isn’t good, thinks you’ve probably been living with fighting on your own for too long. So, he stays. He takes his boots off, props the pillows up against the headboard, and lies there, listening to the way you breathe in your sleep, keeping a lookout for any signs of distress. He sighs to himself, resigned to another night of no sleep.

Joel gives you two more days until he issues his ultimatum. Two days of trying to make it through the day without breaking in front of the children, and evenings where you do nothing but cry, sometimes into Joel’s shoulder, sometimes into your pillow. The children are outside playing in a moment without rain when he comes to stand next to you.

“I have to go back,” He speaks softly, because it’s true, you think, his community will be looking for him, “You don’t have to come, I don’t expect you to trust me enough to follow me yet, but I think it would be for the best.”

“How far is it?” You ask without looking at him.

“With them?” He nods his head to the children, “Three weeks.”

“And they’ll accept us?”

“Long as you do as I say when we get there, yes.”

“And you promise, if I catch a single whiff of something being off, I can leave?” You bite at the skin on the inside of your mouth until it bleeds, weighing up what following Joel actually means.

He holds his palms up in surrender, “You can go anytime.”

You take in a deep breath, worst comes to worst, you can always shoot him if he doesn’t stay true to his word. So you nod. You agree.

“We can leave tomorrow morning.”

You know, as soon as you step into the community behind this bastard of a man, that it’s been a trap all along. It’s nothing big, a few dilapidated lodges in a clearing – there isn’t even a wall, but as he leads you down the middle of the street, something feels off and it has everything to do with the people staring at you. It doesn’t matter how many pairs of eyes you have on you as you grip your gun by your side, they’re all women. Some older than others, but from what you can see, you’re the youngest by far, apart from the children.

They aren’t playing, they don’t seem like children as you remember them. Even in the QZ they’d still been able to run around, find moments of joy in the darkness. There are five that you can see, stood next to women who you think must be their mother’s. Silently staring at you, following you with their eyes as John leads you and your mother into the lodge at the end of the street.

He opens the door, waving you both inside, and you’re furious at the way your mother does as she’s told. You take too long for his liking to step over the threshold, so he takes hold of your shoulder and shoves you through the door, shutting it behind him and standing in front of it, your one exit blocked.

“Your possessions, if you please,” He speaks, sickly sweet, gesturing his hand for you and your mother to put your bags and weapons on the table in the middle of the room, “You’ll get them back soon enough, but we must make sure you don’t have anything dangerous.”

You feel like a deer caught in headlights as your mother does exactly as she’s told. Places her backpack on the table and takes the knife she has from her pocket and sets it next to the bag. John smiles at her, a horrible, toothy grin, which quickly fades when he looks to you.

“And you, little dove,” He croons, it makes you shiver, “You’re not going to cause trouble already, are you?”

You already know there isn’t a chance in hell of you getting your things back, but you do as he says anyway, setting your pack and your gun on the table, but keeping your hunting knife concealed in the waistband of your jeans under the flannel shirt you’re wearing. He seems satisfied - stupid man - you think, as he walks further into the room, opening a large chest.

When he stands, he’s holding white material in his hands, he offers one to your mother, who unravels it to reveal a white dress. He hands you a similar bundle of material, when unraveled it’s another white dress, slightly different in style and size to the one your mother is holding up against her body. What the fuck kind of place have you walked into?

“It will help you fit in,” He explains, “The rest of the folk here dress like this, so it’ll help show them you’re one of us now.”

Something inside you thinks that whatever the women here do, it’s not through choice of their own but you decide not to talk back, following closely behind your mother as John opens the door and leads you back outside and into another lodge down the street, if you could even call it a street.

He opens the door, inside is a woman who you think must be your mother’s age, a baby cradled in her arms which she is rocking back and forth. It’s making tiny, gurgling sounds as if it’s just been fed.

“This is Alice,” John introduces, “You’ll stay here with her, and she can help you get acquainted with the way we do things here,” Alice turns and nods her head at him, much like you imagined people would do when they met royalty, “Dinner will be at sundown.”

With the baby clutched to her, Alice silently motions for you both to follow her. She leads you up the stairs and opens one of the doors. Inside, it’s simple, two single beds, one chest of drawers but nothing much else.

“You sleep here,” She speaks, her voice quiet and meek, “And please change,” She motions to your dresses, “It’ll make things easier.”

She closes the door behind her, and you can hear her footsteps retreating down the stairs. Your mother is already stripping out of her normal clothes and draping the white dress over her body. It doesn’t fit her properly, it’s too big. The hemline ghosts at the ground, long sleeves taper in at her wrists. She looks fucking ridiculous, you think.

“You heard her,” She chastises, “Get changed.”

Oh, so now you want to pretend you’re in charge. You suck your teeth in frustration, but take off your shirt anyway, letting the white material slip over you. You keep your jeans on, more as a place to keep your knife concealed than anything else. You can’t help the smug feeling that fills you when you realise your dress fits you perfectly. You don’t look nearly as stupid as your mother does in hers. Yours is a different style. Still long enough to ghost the ground by your boots, but the neckline is cut differently, dipping down to show off the swell of your breasts, and your arms are shorter, cut off just below your shoulders. You don’t think you’d ever worn something like this in your life. If it weren’t for the situation, you find yourself in, you’d start to think you actually looked nice.

Your mother opts to head back downstairs – maybe thinking she can entice Alice into a conversation, but she’s silent. She just sits on the couch and rocks her baby, vacant expression in her eyes, ignores your mother when she asks questions. The only time she really moves is when there’s a faint sound of a ringing bell. She stands, places the baby in a crib set in the living room and just motions for you to follow her.

It's when you sit down that you realise quite how fucked you are. John sits at the head of the table, because of course he does, but just as you’d suspected, the only other people sat at the table are women, apart from some of the small children who are boys. All dressed in similar white dresses to you. All wearing a similar vacant expression as Alice was. There’s a door behind John that opens, and two women, both clearly pregnant, but one further along than the other, bring out pots full of what looks like stew when it’s spooned into the bowl in front of you.

You go to pick up the spoon and start eating, but the sound of someone clearing their throat pulls your attention to the end of the table. It’s John, and when you look down, every single one of the women is holding hands with those sat next to them. An old woman sat next to you, graying hair and wrinkled face, has her palm up, waiting for you to slip your hand in her own. You set the spoon down and give her your hand, then John speaks.

“To our most gracious Lord, we extend our thanks to you for keeping us safe in these troubled times and for providing us with a meal to sustain us, amen.”

There is a small murmur of ‘amens’ around the table and then everyone picks up their spoons and begins to eat, although you’ve truly lost your appetite. All you can think is how the fuck you’re going to get out of here.

The next morning, when you set off from the safety of the cabin, you realise just how slow you are as a group. When you’d first arrived at your cabin, just you and the children, it hadn’t felt like it had taken that long to find your place of safety, but maybe that’s because you’d still had that adrenaline running through you. Now, as you walk behind Joel, who always seems to be fast enough to be feet away from you, you realise just how long this trek through the woods is going to take.

The eldest two children walk by your side – you walk slowly enough that they can keep up with you, but after a few hours, you realise Isabel is who is going to slow you down the most, so you opt to pick her up and carry her on your hip. She’s almost too big for this, her weight making your arms ache, but for the sake of making this quicker, you suffer on, shifting her around every now and then as you follow Joel, eyes always trained on the back of his head.

You stop that night in a clearing. The air is cool and it’s the first time in a long time that the children have had nothing but the solid ground to sleep on, but they don’t seem to mind, settling underneath the jacket that Joel had shrugged off, using yours as a scrunched-up pillow. You’re sitting with your back against the trunk of a tree, knees pulled up to your chest, Joel is sitting in a similar manner across from you.

“I can help carry her.” He speaks softly across the clearing.

You shake your head with a resolute and stern “No.” Thrown in his direction.

He holds his hands up in surrender, “You gonna carry her the whole way?” He challenges, and the ache that’s settled in your arms tells you he’s right, you aren't, “I don’t know what you’re scared of but I’m not going to do anythin’ to her.”

It’s a question you don’t really know how to answer, because you think deep down that you know he won’t hurt her. He’s done nothing but protect you since he crashed into your life – he’s fed you, protected you, carried your dead son and buried him, he slept next to you, as far away as he could get, didn’t try and touch you without permission. Everything he’s done so far has proved he’s a good man. It could still be some kind of sick joke though, that he’s leading you somewhere bad, that he could pick Isabel up and run off with her, or hurt her.

“I get it,” He murmurs now, “I’m a random guy that’s turned up and caused a lot’a trouble, and I’m takin’ you somewhere new and that’s scary,” He exhales a big sigh, “But I promise I ain’t gonna hurt ya, I know somethin’ bad’s happened to you before,” He signal to his own neck where that horrible scar sits on you, “I know whatever happened to you, to these kids,” He nods to where they’re sleeping, “Must'a been bad, and I don’t know how anyone could hurt you.”

“You don’t know me.”

“I’m tryin’ to,” He defends, “I’m tryin’ to help you as well.”

“I’m not-” You shake your head, “Just been alone a long time, I’m not used to having to trust people.”

“It’s gonna take time,” He admits, his own mind flashing back to how long it took him to trust anyone in this new world, “And I’m not askin’ for it all at once, just let me help a little, alright?”

You’re silent, because you don’t really want to admit you need help. You’ve been fine on your own, with the children, for so long, and he’s wandered into your life and set off a chain of events you aren’t sure you’re actually going to recover from. You don’t need him, not really, is what you think as you focus your attention to the ground where the children are sleeping.

Joel takes the silence as conversation over. He won’t push you, he knows it’ll probably end in tears if he does, but the next morning, when you pack all your things away and get ready to move on, instead of hiking Isabel into your own arms, you gently push at her shoulders to get her to walk towards Joel.

“How about you hitch a ride with him this morning?” You ask softly, bent to her height.

Joel kneels too, trying to make himself look less intimidating to her, although he doesn’t think it really works from the way she tries to scurry back into your arms. He thinks about how Sarah was at her age, so unsure of the big people around her, scared of anyone that wasn’t him.

He stretches out one of his big hands to her, “Come on,” He coaxes gently, “You ever ridden first class on a pair of shoulders before?”

Isabel sucks on her thumb a little, but shakes her head to tell him no, “It’s the best thing,” Joel adds, “You’ll see everything from up here.”

That seems to do it, because with another nudge from you she’s walking over and putting her impossibly small hand into Joel’s. He doesn’t remember the last time he’d touched someone this small, apart from Tommy’s baby. He hauls her up with ease, settling her on his shoulders, just like he promised. He’s got hold of her legs to keep her steady as he starts walking, trying to dampen the lump in his throat and the tears that are springing to his eyes. It’s so familiar, the way the weight of her sat there feels. If he closes his eyes, he’s back in Austin, walking through the park with Sarah sat up there, pointing out birds and butterflies and trying to keep her steady when she squeals with excitement.

He's sure that this might be his undoing, he thinks as he walks slowly, accounting for the other children that are following behind, each one clasping one of your hands tightly. How has he allowed himself to care this quickly for you and the children that follow you? How has he managed to go so fucking soft already? He can’t explain it, the way your sweetness has sunk under his skin. He knows there’s something more to you, he’s going to try and coax it out of you if he possibly can, but he’s sure that whatever you might have to say to him, whatever it is you’re going to tell him that happened to you, is only going to make him more likely to protect you, to lay down everything to keep you safe, and it scares him. Where is the Joel he knows? The closed off, grumpy man who won’t let anyone in? Where is that man he knows like the back of his hand, and is too late to go and find him? He thinks it probably is when he hears the slight chuckle from the girl sat on his shoulders, who’s pointing her hand at the butterfly that floats past them in mid-air. He’s fucked, he thinks, and for once, he thinks he might just be okay with that.

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wormsin · 8 months

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Different anon here and I’m sorry for derailing the topic with this ask and making it more into a gen or possibly including other ship territory, but your answers made me curious on how (do you think) his relationship to his mission contributes to his inner turmoil and his relationship (this codependency) with Dick, especially when his mission is oftentimes conflated with Joker which then extends to this codependency to him (Joker)? I suppose, I’m trying to reconcile these two points, since I’ve always been focused on the latter (his unhealthy relationship with Joker) and have seen many people pointed its evidences in canon, and rarely the former (his unhealthy relationship with Dick, and whenever I see a post about it, it’s always confined in a very fixed nuclear father-son relationship) until I see your answers and now it has intrigued me

no worries! I also like gen Bruce & Dick, and other ships of theirs. well some of them 😅

if I'm understanding your question right, what is the ven diagram overlap of Bruce's codependency with the Joker and codependency with Dick? how are these dependencies reconciled? I actually have been researching this and have a conspiracy theory about how it all works in Bruce's brain. (had to figure it out for my fic It's Never Over Until it's Over. as some of the theory is spoilers for the rest of the fic, I won't get into it all now. but I will write the meta after the fic is complete.)

first of all, yes, a lot of Bruce&Dick dysfunction meta I see is through the lens of parental abuse. imo there's some of that in comics but the vast majority is just Not Parental.

Dick Bruce Joker Codependency Triangle

there's not a lot of comics that I've found that address both of these relationships, but some moments come to mind:

Joker shoots Dick, Dick nearly falls to his death, and Bruce fires Dick.

Dick kills the Joker, and Bruce revives him.

Dick, Damian and the Joker fight side by side (sort of) against Dr. Hurt while Bruce is "dead".

Dick goes to Bruce after Jason has died.

a simple understanding of these dependencies are that Dick and the Joker are the angel and devil on Bruce's shoulders. Dick keeps Bruce in the light and saves his life; Joker drives him towards madness and suicide. the Joker represents the line Bruce can't cross (murder, which would make Bruce evil) and Dick is the version of Bruce who doesn't need that line.

I think it's more complicated than that. there are too many overlaps between Dick and Joker, and the Robins in general and Joker. some of this might be just because Dick and the Joker are the oldest continuous characters for Bruce and writers love to iterate on those relationships. but there are some really interesting comics that delve into Bruce's psyche and Dick, Joker, Batman and his parents play huge roles in his mind.

the mission in general is both Bruce's maladaptive coping mechanism, which strains all his relationships, and his potential to be the best version of himself. this makes it very difficult for Bruce to be a balanced person. I think Dick is one of the few people who sees both sides of the Mission, and helps Bruce be a balanced Batman.

the Joker on the other hand, only sees one side of Batman. he is maybe THE person who drags Bruce into the worst version of his Mission. and I think Bruce having a healthy relationship to Batman necessarily involves untangling his self from the Joker, which he arguably has started to do in the last few big Joker storylines.

#dont have time to gather comic evidence #stay tuned for a huge meta post about this in the future #and how bruce is plural #ask worm #batman #bruce wayne #dick grayson #the joker #meta

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aita-blorbos · 8 months

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AITA for telling my deceased father to stay the hell away from my spirit medium daughter?

Hi! This is actually my second time posting here. You might remember me (30s F) from the time I asked about whether or not I was the asshole for growing a kid in a test tube without getting my wife’s express permission. That was a long time ago, now. Eight whole years, in fact! But things have been pretty alright for the most part since then.

My wife (30s F GNC) and I have been working through our issues. We’re in a good place now and have tried our very best to be parents. I’m proud of how we’ve raised our daughter. She’s an intelligent, kind, downright incredible kid, and neither of us would trade her for the world.

But, recently, our daughter (8 F) almost died. We did not actually lose her, thank the stars, but she had a near death experience. This near death experience ended up awakening latent magical powers in her, and now she’s developed the ability to see and speak with ghosts.

This would be stressful in any situation, but ours especially. You see, my wife and I both have lost ‘loved ones’ in the past. For him, it was his ex-wife (20s F), and for me, it was my father (40s M)

This was a very, VERY long time ago, but this was something that impacted the two of us greatly. Especially considering our relationships with our respective loved ones grew strained by the end there. Both his ex-wife and my father became abusive towards us, and although they were ‘not in their right minds,’ it was… traumatic.

My wife has always held complicated feelings regarding his ex-wife. He’s never hated her for what happened— not really. He just wishes he could have helped her before her mental health got to that point. But I… don’t feel the same way about my father. I mean… I loved him, and I know he loved me when he was still capable of it, but I resent him. A lot. In many ways, he ruined my life.

You can imagine my shock and horror, then, when my daughter said she met two particular ghosts while on the brink of death. She described them as “a pretty lady” and “a funny old man,” and said they helped her calm down and get back to her body. She says they were very kind to her.

I… have reason to believe that these spirits were the spirits of my wife’s ex-wife and my father, and I am very stressed about it.

When I talked to my wife, he seemed optimistic. He said he well and truly believed that maybe they’d turned over a new leaf— that maybe, in death, they were granted clarity and felt bad about all that they’d done to us. But I… just couldn’t feel the same way. I told him that it was okay if he felt that way about his ex-wife, but that I would never, EVER believe my father to be capable of such change.

Later that night, after he fell asleep, I went out to the garden alone. I knew that if my dad really was still around, that he’d be ‘watching over me,’ even if I couldn’t see him, and so I made a request: I told him to stay the hell away from my daughter. That he’d already ruined enough and that I wouldn’t let him hurt her too.

But now my daughter is very upset with me. She’s saying I made the ‘funny old man’ sad. She says he says he loves me and that he’s so sorry and he just wants to be able to talk to me. That he’s missed me so much and that it’s made his heart hurt to watch me suffer all these years.

I don’t know what to do. I don’t THINK I’m the asshole— I just want to keep my family safe, but at the same time, I don’t want to… to HURT my dad. Especially if… he really is responsible for making sure I didn’t lose my daughter. It’s just hard to believe he’s in his right mind now— that he’s the same ‘kind’ person he was when I was young, and reconcile that with the ways he mistreated me when he wasn’t. What am I supposed to do?

AITA?

#aita #am i the asshole #unreality #abuse mention

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wickedcriminal · 2 years

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your httyd half-brothers au is amazing!! i am so in love with the hiccups 😍 i’m also curious about how valka and valhallarama get along in this au and what they think of each other, what do you think?

AAH THANK YOU and I'm glad you asked because I've been wanting to talk about them!! Answering these all together so I can get in depth about the Haddock family.

So to establish the groundwork, the story goes that Stoick fell in love with and married Valka, but after she had Hiccup, she was taken away by dragons and was presumed dead. Over the next five years, Stoick went through a grieving process where he eventually came to terms with and accepted her death, and found it in him to open his heart again.

The person he opened his heart to again was Valhallarama, who was also beginning to open her heart again after the supposed death of her former lover, Humongously Hotshot the hero (or Oswald the Agreeable of you wanted to go with this post!). In this case, Valhallarama's sentiment from the books "you weren't my first love but you are my last" applies to both of them!

The Hiccups with the Moms:

When the Hiccups meet Valka in HTTYD2, Hiccup the Elder's reaction is mostly the same except for him being a little more hesitant to call her 'Mom', because he grew up calling Valhallarama that and he doesn't want to discredit her place in his life. Of course, Valhallarama did spend most of the boys' childhood out questing, meaning the role of mother figure was generally pretty vacant, and Valka does put in more of an effort to spend time with her son(s) when she meets them, which Hiccup the Elder still appreciates despite holding more complex feelings about her being away for 20 years without coming back to him.

Hiccup the Younger, on the other hand, is actually downright ecstatic about Valka. He was nervous at first, and then Valka showed him the dragon sanctuary. And then she showed him she knew dragonese. He was pretty much sold on her after that. Of course he's still understanding of his older brother's more nuanced feelings, but he and Valka would absolutely hit it off so hard. His relationship with Valka has him accepting her as the type of mother figure that Valhallarama isn't, since we know from the books that his relationship with her is slightly strained due to her extended absences and her tougher way of parenting.

(Of course, Stoick himself downright has an aneurysm. He still loves Valka, of course, but it doesn't undermine his love for Valhallarama to see she's alive; after all, Stoick has already had twenty years to accept her death and find happiness elsewhere. Still, he really wants Valka to come home with him, to see what Berk has become and get to be a part of her son's life again.)

After Stoick's death, both Valka and Valhallarama take this as a wake up call to finally make an effort to be a part of their sons' lives again. Valhallarama starts coming and staying home more often, and Valka returns to Berk, bringing their family closer together at last.

The Moms with each other

As for how Valka and Valhallarama think of each other, it takes a bit of time to develop a kinship between them. They don't harbor any bad blood, or even resentment in particular, but it is a little awkward, to say the least. After a few months, though, they start to bond over raising their sons together and find common ground, and become proper friends and establish an excellent partnership.

As for if they get together eventually, maybe they will!! The only thing keeping me from saying for certain was Valhallarama's sentiment to Stoick; 'you aren't my first love, but you are my last'. But then, human hearts are not made of stone; they can break and heal and beat again.

Perhaps these ladies' hearts have room for one more.

#also we can't forget gobber who was Absolutely an honorary dad #httyd #httyd au #half brothers au #hiccup #book!hiccup #stoick httyd #httyd valka #valhallarama #ask #sorry this took a second to get to!!

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nothingkillsyoulikeyourmind105 · 2 years

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Warning: Mentions of Death, Violence,Depression, Suicide, Breaking Up, Miscarriage, Self Harm.

BuckyxFem! OFC , Eddie BrockxFem! OFC

Chapter One

Sneak Peek for Part : 2 Chapter 2 Sneak Peak Of Characters Chapter 3 Sneak Peak Chapter 4 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Sneak Peak of Chapter 7 Chapter 7 Sneak Peak Chapter 8 Chapter 8 Sneak Peak Chapter 9 & 10 Chapter 9 part 1 Chapter 9 part 2 Chapter 10 part 1 Chapter 10 part 2 Chapter 11 Chapter 12

This is my first post

A/N-this is my first fanfic I’m currently working on at the moment. Feel free to comment.

This is a short beginning. This is a working progress. Hope everyone enjoys.

The James Buchanan Barnes constantly on the move with work. With his beloved at home waiting for him. When their relationship starts to fall apart Audrey tries to find out why things aren’t working out. With a secret of her own she tries to navigate this life in hiding. The world isn’t ready for her secret. Neither her friends. With a secret enemy hidden in plain sight waiting to strike. Audrey held onto hope that he’ll come home soon. James would be gone for a few days the suddenly it went to weeks. Audrey didn’t want to think that he was planning on leaving her. Audrey has big news for him, that will change their lives.

But will things be the same when he returns.

Audrey awakens to the sound of an alarm. The bright blinding lights strain her eyes. The throbbing pain in her head makes its hard to focus. The alarm suddenly shuts off.

There’s complete silence all around. She closes her eyes to focus her energy on clearing her foggy head. Her body tingled with pain. Unable to move she was in hell. She thought of her life before it all came to this.

Audrey and James Apartment

“James Please you work too much. Please Stay”

“Darling it’s one mission I’ll be home before you say “I Love You”

“When will you be home?”

“Tomorrow Morning for sure my love”

He gathers his belongs and rushes to the door. He didn’t look back to Audrey.

“I Love You…..”

Audrey whispered.

Bucky rushes out from their apartment. Audrey watches him leave. She didn’t tell him she was pregnant. She had been planning a whole day for them. Tears rush down her face as she walks back to their room. She cries herself to sleep thinking of Bucky.

The next morning comes but there’s no Bucky. Hours go by but to no news or a phone call from any of the avengers. She quickly grabs her phone to dial Steve or Sam in hopes they would give her news of the situation.

Steve phone just rings then straight to voicemail. She tries again Voicemail again.

Hopefully with Sam she has luck with him.

On the other line he picks up……..

Theres silence at first then a groggy voice is heard

“Audrey”

“Hello Sam. Sam its me Audrey” she cries tears of joy hearing his voice.

“Yeah I’m here. Sorry I was taking a nap. What’s up”

“I’ve been trying to get ahold of Steve, I’m worried about Bucky have you heard from him. He was supposed to be home this morning. I had no luck of getting ahold of him. Was there any complications on the mission.”

“Really. Everyone came back from that mission yesterday evening.”

“what? yesterday evening”

“Is everything okay Audrey”

She pauses before she can say anything. All the possibilities running through her mind she pauses on the thought that Bucky is cheating.

“Audrey, Audrey?!”

“Yes Sam”

“Are you okay? Do you need me to come over.”

“No Sam its all right. I’m gonna step out and get some fresh air”

“Okay,don’t do anything crazy. Hey Audrey if I see Steve or Bucky I’ll send them your way.”

“Please do Sam. Thank you Sam. Bye”

“Bye Audrey”

Nothing had prepared her for this moment. How could he lie to her. Audrey thought to herself that if she told him sooner would it had made a difference in their relationship. Would he had stayed with her.

1 Month Later

In the beginning of her pregnancy. She came to terms that she would be raising her child alone.

The appointments came and went everything was on track as a good healthy pregnancy. But tragedy struck in the early hours of a cold December morning.

“How could this had happened? Why me?”

“There was no stress in my life? I did everything right? A healthy diet the proper amount of nutrients?”

Questions quickly piled onto one another. As she sat on the hospital bed waiting for her doctor to return. Nurses came and gone but lost in her thoughts she couldn’t help to feel responsible for her loss.

As the doctor spoke to her all she could think about was the day James Buchanan Barnes walked out of her life. Was there something she did wrong. Did he not love her anymore.

Audrey was discharged from the hospital a few days later. She went back to their apartment where all the memories reminded her of him.

She looked around the apartment one picture frame after another she took them down. She needed to let him go. There was no point on hold on to the past. He made his decision that day and she needed to let him go.

It hurt so much to box up her belongings. But the pain of losing a child can’t be explained. She kept packing her things up until all that was left was Bucky things lying around.

The moving truck came in a timely manner. The men from the moving truck assisted with bring her belongings down. Together they left to her new apartment far from his place.

She couldn’t bare to see him again. If he returned.

Bucky Pov:

“Steve I can’t do this anymore. I’m not in love with Kayla anymore. She isn’t Audrey. All she wants to do is shop all the time.”

“Buck, don’t do this to Audrey. Just tell her”

“I can’t Steve. How could I face her when I cheated on her. She trusted me and I betrayed her.” “I left a letter for her explaining everything. I just hope she hasn’t found it”

“I got to go back to the apartment Steve.”

1 Month Later

Bucky Pov

I watched a moving truck leave the front of the building. I couldn’t bring myself speak with her face to face. Like a coward I walked around the block, I waited what felt like hours. With the courage I made to come up with I went to our apartment. The smell of her perfume lingered in the air it was intoxicating. But a small envelope laid on the kitchen table.

James

If you’re reading this I’ve left I couldn’t bare another minute here. Was there something I did wrong if so I could have fixed it. Why did you leave? Was the question on my mind everyday. But I have come to terms with reality that you don’t want me a apart of yours. I hold no ill will against you. She must be beautiful and an amazing person. I hope she’s everything you want. Take care of yourself James.

Sincerely yours,

Audrey W.

No words could be put in order as Bucky fell to his knees crying. How could he have messed up everything. Their life together wasn’t perfect but he was madly in love with her when they first met. How could he have thrown her away for a fling.

He had to find Audrey and find a way to fix his mistake.

But where could she have gone. There was no clue in the apartment where she had gone too.

A/N - This has been updated on 5/10

I have added links to the betrayal series. I’m so happy with and I’m currently working on another project. I do hope everyone enjoys reading. Now it’s easier to navigate.

#bucky angst #marvel fanfiction #marvel fanfic writer #bucky barnes #bucky fic #james bucky buchanan barnes #bucky fanfic #eddie brock #venom #read more #buckyxfemcharacter

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staytilspringday · 1 year

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Thoughts on Saintmaker (2023)

A haunted convent. Statues that move on their own. A buried past. Welcome to Saint Idelora’s convent, where becoming a saint comes with a price.

Yangyang did it again! I was very excited to play their latest game and I’ve been meaning to sit down and talk about it, so this might be a lengthy post. Also, haven’t 100% completed so I might miss some things! WARNING: Spoilers

1. Themes There’s an emphasis on family, religion and being as close to saintly as you can (omg she said it har har). I think that one of the strengths of Yangyang’s visual novels, is the relationship between the characters, and this is no exception. Holly does have to go through a lot (and by that, i have no idea how long the recollection in game is supposed to be but it can’t be a month so its a lot over a few days) but it’s clear that her relationship with her family has shaped her into being a peace keeping doormat, as much as she hates it. 2. Choices, Choices On my second playthrough, I played with a friend who was frustrated that Holly wouldn’t follow through with the choices she choose but it makes perfect sense. Holly spent years as the peace keeper to not rock the boat, a random voice in her head isn’t going to make her suddenly snap and yell at other people. You influence her actions, but you don’t get to choose if that makes sense. In this regard, it reminds me of Cupid, in that you tell the protagonist this or that, which can affect their actions but they can rebel against you. There are brief segments where you get to play Adira, the presiding nun for the recollection, as she fixes and repaints the statues in the convent. It was only until near the end, when she asks for any message from her former sisters, the choices are in red and horror-esque text and both are to urge her to continue the abusive treatment the Sisters of St. Idelora subjects their girls under. My first thought was that it was Idelora herself, the woman who founded the Order and the person every nun wanted to emulate. She certainly had no problems justifying her choices--which proved to be fatal for one character and gravely traumatizing for another--while maintaining a calm and maternal approach to all everyone. But as the story went on, I was wondering if it was the land itself or whatever was causing the convent to act up.

3. The Story

Despite being a shorter read, Saintmaker has a very moving story. The relationships between characters was my favorite parts of the Letter, and I’m so happy to see this return stronger than ever in Saintmaker. The cast is much smaller but this decision has given us a more in depth look in their relationships and the characters themselves—from Holly and Gabbie’s strained relationship to becoming friends, how Adira still has a sense of humor even when she’s a stern old lady, Holly’s constant remembering of her sister Liana.

It’s a tale of tragedy, of relationships and their loss, of fighting against what is the norm for you. It was gut wrenching to realize Holly reimagined her memories with Liana to keep herself from remembering how it really was or how Adira forced herself to forget Cordelia, no matter how attached she was. Holly did so because her parents decided not to bring her up anymore and basically erased her while Adira had to forget because she believed her sisters were doing the right thing, even if she disagreed with her.

(Sidenote: all of the VAs, you truly made these characters come to life. I would not be as devastated if it weren’t for your talents, love yall for that you have a nice day now 💗)

BONUS THINGS I WANTED TO SAY:

1. Holly praying when she got scared reminded me of Isabella’s Quick Time event in the letter. I was on edge for jumpscares in the game, but most of the creepiness was from the brilliant atmosphere that was set up.

2. There’s also the persistent ghost in both games. Takako, who’s a malevolent spirit after death and then there’s Cordelia. Takako actively pursues the protagonists while Cordelia is just stuck and tried to find a way to break the routine in the convent. She was terrifying at first (Cordelia’s faceless because everything about her was erased and forgotten—nameless, faceless, brilliant btw) but I did get used to her and just felt so awful for her.

Yup. Saintmaker drew me in with the premise of religious horror (and I was like ‘from a Filipino team?? Understandable’) and trauma and I had to go and give my own sister a hug afterwards. It’s eerie, it has its moments of lightheartedness that keeps you attached to the characters, and it’s story is goddamned good. This whole thing’s a mess but I just had to let it out. That’s all but I’d love to hear your thoughts on the game!

#saintmaker #saintmaker vn #cupid vn #the letter vn #yangyang mobile

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silriven · 2 years

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Thoughts on VotS

I'm working on other stories now but I still think about In the Valley of the Shadow a lot. I'm pretty sure I made the right decision to put that whole project away but did I ever have high hopes for what kind of story that World of Warcraft: Shadowlands was going to deliver.

VotS was supposed to be just a fun little "what if/fix it" fic to slot Wrathion into whatever story played out, but as the expansion went on, there were more and more things that I wanted to "fix" and it spiraled into something that was way bigger than I could chew for a fanfic. I still have these images in my head that I desperately want to depict, of Wrathion making the long, icy climb to Icecrown, spreading his wings and falling into the shattered sky. I wanted to write him bargaining for information from characters like Ve'nari. I wanted to make Wrathion the clever hero of a tragic, romantic katabasis story. I wanted to write Wrathion being Anduin's advisor under strained circumstances, dueling politically with Stormwind's cruel, catty nobles, fighting to win Anduin's trust.

ToAW was a very meta fanfic that wouldn't have happened if someone hadn't said something dumb in Taliesin & Evitel's Twitch chat one time about how "wrong" it would be if Anduin was "forced" to be gay in game. VotS was similarly going to be a little meta. I was really tired of the WoW community on Twitter and was basically like "Fine. You want wranduin fans to acknowledge that Wrathion wouldn't be trusted by other characters in universe? I kind of think this would make for a really compelling narrative, so let's do this right."

I wanted to write Turalyon as a villain and have Wrathion and Genn fall into a "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" type of adversarial relationship as they both grow increasingly frustrated over watching how things play out between Turalyon and Anduin.

I had plans for Anduin suffering in Torghast under the literal and metaphorical weight of what he'd done during the Fourth War. I wanted to play a long game role reversal where Anduin was the one who would ultimately have to prove that he was worthy of Wrathion by saving him.

I wanted to bring in my ideas for Tiffin again and have her as a lost soul who would shelter Wrathion in Oribos. The city would have been tweaked slightly to also serve as a waystation for the dead who couldn't find a proper place in the Shadowlands hierarchy or move on.

I wanted to bring in Nyxondra (Wrathion's mother, not my OC) in a way that would give her a real character. I toyed with the idea of having her play a crucial role in...something, possibly sheltering Anduin in some way that would mirror Tiffin sheltering Wrathion.

I thought there was going to be more done with Taelia that I could work with, but there ended up being...nothing of substance with finding her father. Or Anduin. So then I wanted to give her the attention that I thought she deserved and that became another plot thread to juggle.

I also wanted to write a toxic relationship between Anduin and Tess that shows the darker side of what can happen when two incompatible people try to force a marriage to work. It would be in the vein of Stede and Mary's dynamic in the last episode of Our Flag Means Death S1.

I was also fed up with the great Anduin ship wars and wanted to write my own answer to what I thought would make a compelling version of the Anduin/Wrathion/Tess/Taelia quadrangle. I also wanted to write Tess/Lorna (also known as the “Rebel Princess” ship), which I fell in love with after writing Tess/Vanessa in ToAW.

It was going to be long, brutal, and bloody. I didn't want to skimp on the horrors of Torghast. But I wanted all of it to end comfortingly with Wrathion and Anduin having adventures on the shores of the Dragon Isles, Anduin first nursing Wrathion back to health.

The final piece in the puzzle that completely broke things was Sylvanas' story. I couldn't, for the life of me, come up with a satisfying way to rewrite her Shadowlands arc, one that included her sisters, without writing a "fix it" story for Battle for Azeroth, too. It was too much.

Maybe I'll figure out what to do with the pieces of these ideas, or at least write an outline or summary to stick up on Ao3 or here on tumblr like I did for ToAW. I keep thinking I should do some more sketches or something but I'm trying to focus more on improving my writing than drawing nowadays.

I think I at least answered "what do I do with all of this" for myself in writing this. I wish I had the energy to write this fic but I just don't, at least not right now. People didn't seem to mind reading ToAW after I wrote and posted the outline on tumblr.

Ok that's enough ruminating for now, time to go back to FFXIV and my current fanfic project. It's an AU, a collaboration, and takes place in the woods.

#silriven: in the valley of the shadow

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blood-loving-leech · 5 months

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Reasons why @/deadvxmp was a shitty boyfriend

He was my best friend from fall of 2021 until fall of 2022

Last october he tried to kill himself, when i freaked out and started crying my sister heard me and told my moms friend who was watching us that night who then tried to call emts like ANY PERSON WOULD WHEN A KID IS TRYING TO KILL THEMSELVES

And so he said I was “making his attempt about me” yeah my bad for worrying about your fucking LIFE AND SURVIVAL DAMN he just wanted me to not feel any emotions abt his death ig

After that everything kinda went downhill with my then-girlfriend and I wasn’t sure about if I should break up with her since she was my only friend and everyone else was just friends by extension through her but he convinced me to break up with her knowing full well she was my only irl friend

In january, he ghosted me for a week and a half when I visited california, when I got back I tried to kms and he decided without talking to me that it was his fault and that i’d kms if he left which he is now using against me saying I explicitly threatened to kms if he left me and claiming that that was emotional manipulation on my part

At this point I think he was only friends with me because of that and he was supposed afraid of me, then in february he asked to call me his boyfriend?? which why would you ASK THAT if you don’t even like the person fuck you

After my attempt, my mother grew suspicious of the college student we were both friends with (for some reason, Misha seems to think I had something to do with it but I have no clue what her though process was) and effectively ended up getting them (college student) cut out of our lives, said student was regrettably Mishas fp and so when we found out it was my mom back in june he blamed me and spent months guilting me over it and making it very clear that it was “all my fault” for trying to kms in the first place until we broke up

sometime in the spring he literally taught me how to purge and yet he blames me for worsening his eating disorder despite me telling him not to abuse the laxatives when he first got them and trying to convince him to eat more and telling him i’d love him no matter what he looked like but SURE i’m the one who encouraged his ed because he thought i’d only like him if he was skinny even though i never said anything of the sort

he also blamed me for treating him like a child every time he misunderstood something and I tried to explain myself because he said it made him feel stupid and generally just told me to shut up every time i tried explaining myself

he never said he loved me first, undoubtedly because he never actually loved me, and he said he didn’t believe i loved him so i spent our entire relationship trying to prove my love to him until finally i realized he was putting in no effort to love me and i stopped trusting him (he broke up with me like literally one week after i said “i don’t believe you anymore”)

when i realized i had issues that were affecting our relationship i went to therapy for them and my therapist said “yeah you could work on some stuff but he also has to learn to trust you as his boyfriend” and i told him that and he said he could try and then like two days later said “yeah i lied actually im never going to trust you i just wanted you to think id try” like WTF

when he broke up with me he said it was to “take the strain off our friendship” since we’d been arguing almost all the time and i said he’d have to give me some time because DUH he was breaking up with me and that fucken hurt but then i literally had no other friends so i went back to him and said we could be friends and he told me basically to fuck off and take some time to figure stuff out while he talked to his friends about stuff and so two days later when he blocked me everywhere i asked what was going on and he was like “my friends all say you’re a shitty person and i prefer not talking to you so leave me alone and never talk to me again” and then blocked me some more

so in heartbroken confusion i wanted to figure out what he thought i did that was so shitty by waiting for him to post stuff abt it on his tumblr but then he started going off about how i was ableist and encouraged his eating disorder and physically abused him even though he lives in alaska and i live in washington and its literally closer to mexico than it is to him but yeah sure i totally did all that

so i got angry and did dumb things and went off on him and called him names i knew he hated and all sorts of shit to which he responded by telling all our mutual friends that i did all those things that i didn’t unless i have complete fucking amnesia so there goes the few sorta friends i still have and i still wanted to know what i supposedly did wrong and obviously i did more dumb shit that got out of hand and now he’s sending people to tell me to kms and people to threaten to kill me which i actually wish they would do but he chose to be mutuals with cowards who won’t actually hike butt over to gig harbor and stab me

are we both terrible people? maybe yes. i know i’ve made mistakes but he certainly isn’t innocent

i’ve done things wrong but the whole time we were dating i hand made him gifts and jewelry and sent him tea bags and told him i loved him multiple times every day and wrote him poems and drew fanart of his ocs and fawned over how cute/handsome he was and how good his sense of fashion was and encourage his career dreams and assure him i loved him and i planned to move with him to college and then canada and get shots to fix my cat allergies so we could have cats and i broke the rules and almost got kicked out of my favorite summer camp because he asked me to and he never said he loved me and the only compliment he could ever muster was “v snazzy” so i don’t think it’s much of a question of who loved who here

the difference is i only ever wanted to figure out my mistakes while he decided it was appropriate to send people to tell me to kms

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the-apprentice-lia · 3 years

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Hey! I saw that you do headcanons as well? Sorry if I’m asking in the right place but I loved your post on Asra’s hurt!! Could you possibly do the “mc getting slapped by the m6” ask please? My angsty little heart needs foodddd

hiii!! i’m so glad you liked my post:)) don’t worry, i’ll do my best to not cry when i’m writing this although it probably won’t work

i just wanna say that under no circumstances is it okay to hurt your partner!! please don’t take this post the wrong way:)

the main 6 slapping mc

asra

• it probably started because of how much he keeps from you. you know it’s just because he doesn’t want to see you hurt or unhappy because of how much of your life you’ve lost to your premature death, but it’s still so infuriating. you’re not a child, and you tell him as much.

• as much as you love each other, arguments can get messy. you know so much about each other that it’s difficult not to go for the soft parts in an argument, and you just snap.

• they’re probably running his hands through his hair, tears of frustration and pent up feelings slipping down his cheeks and catching the light of the many candles around the shop, making them glister strangely beneath the low light.

• “asra, you’re being ridiculous. how in the arcana am i supposed to know about who i was if you won’t fucking tell me?” you shout at them, crystals and glass bottles clinking together on the shelves.

• asra breaks, finally raising his voice as well, telling you that you’re acting like a child. you feel a twisted feeling of satisfaction at his loss of control. at least they’re actually treating you like a person— but you’re still so frustrated.’why can’t he just see that you’re not a china doll, easily broken and delicately made?

•you’re screaming now, tears blurring your vision. all you see is red. “if i’m acting like such a child then why did you even bother bringing me back? you should have just fucking left me to rot beneath the lazaret if you won’t so much as—” you’re cut off with a sharp crack.

• asra’s stronger than they look, and he wasn’t thinking as he lashed out in anger and pain, so you probably stumble back into the shelves behind you, or onto the counter of the shop.

• you touch your hand to your hot cheek with a dull feeling of surprise. it’s as if everything is through a haze, your gaze flickering up to meet asra’s horrified one as you take a step back, a dry sob heaving through your chest as your knees give out and you sink to the floor.

• “mc, i’m so sorry, i can’t— i don’t— please. i’m so sorry,” he stumbles over his words as he crouches before you, giving you enough space that you could easily leave. you don’t, and he breathes out slowly as they reach towards you and gently, heartbreakingly softly, cups your face to turn it towards him. he inhales sharply as he takes in your bruised cheekbone, red already beginning to spread outwards in the shape of his hand, and he flinches to see that he’s hurt you, his beloved apprentice.

• he opens his arms slowly, hesitantly, and you sink into them, burying your face in his scarves and then drawing back slightly with a faint hiss as your cheek touches the fabric, and he lets out a sob as well, burying his face in your sweet-smelling hair. murmurs “i’m sorry, i’m so sorry,” into you over and over again, rocking you back and forth on the floor of the shop.

• he’ll hurt for weeks after, even after the bruise fades, he’ll simply refuse to touch you for days after the incident. whispers “but what if i hurt you,” his voice breaking at the mere thought of it, and you cradle him to you, stroking his cheek as he shakes.

nadia

• the argument was probably about her refusing to ask for help. she’s been alone for so long that the refusal simply comes naturally. she has to prove that she can be successful alone, that she can make something of herself without anyone.

• at first, you tell her gently that she can trust you, that you’re always here for her, and that she doesn’t have to do this alone— but she doesn’t want to hear it, telling you insistently that she doesn’t need any help.

• “your dark circles would say otherwise, nadi! you can’t keep going on like this!” you tell her, your voice strained as you lay a hand on her arm. you just want to help her, but she won’t listen to you. “i can do it myself,” she tells you coldly, pulling away from you and turning back to her work. “i don’t need your help. i never have.”

• you feel the hurt blossom in your chest, but you try to push it down as you close her books, smudging the ink on a document by mistake. “nadi, please.” you tell her, but she doesn’t even seem to hear you as she opens her books and sets her jaw, looking at the ruined document. you bite your lip in dismay and go to apologise, but she cuts in before you get the chance. “you ruin everything. you’re such a nuisance, can you not find anything better to do with your time than to bother me? i am the countess of vesuvia, and i don’t need your help.” she’s shouting by the end of her outburst, and you recoil, hurt now showing across your face— but it’s quickly replaced by anger.

• you laugh disbelievingly, your voice spiteful and pained as you speak. “you don’t need my help? well that’s certainly a different tune than the one you were singing when you came to me in the middle of the night, asking for my help. and even then i gave it unbegrudgingly. you’re so stubborn, nadia! you’re so ridiculously naïve that you can’t even see that not everybody’s against you. so your sisters acted like every older sibling the world over, and excluded you from a few games. you carry grudges as if the world’s out to get you and nobody seeks to help you. you’re such a child! why—” your screaming cuts off at the sharp crack.

• you cry out at the sudden flare of pain. nadia’s also a lot stronger than she looks— i mean, she’s a master sword-fighter. and so, you stumble backwards into the marble table opposite her desk, turning away from her to catch your breath, your figure shaking with quiet sobs. everything seems to fall away, and you hold your arms around yourself in a poor attempt to keep your paroxysms of sobs quiet.

• nadia is completely silent. the jarring force snapped her out of whatever tired grumpiness she had been wallowing in, and now she’s just looking at her hands, a look of absolute horror twisting her features as she takes in the hand, resting palm-down on her knees, that she used to— to— she can’t even think about it. she has betrayed your trust, used your relationship, built on a foundation of love and mutual respect, to hurt you. it’s as if she’s seeing the world through a haze of disbelief. she’s taken advantage of your love for her, she’s physically violated you, and the thought of that leaves her physically ill. hot tears drop steadily into her lap, as she turns her hands over, and her eyes widen even more, if possible, with horror. blood glisters thickly on her index finger, coating the closest section to her palm where a golden ring sits. the countess of vesuvia never takes her rings off during the day, and she’s snapped out of her daze by the quiet hiss that comes from where you stand.

•when the first tears stream down your face, you hiss at the sharp pain, touching your fingers gently to your face and wincing as they come into contact with… is that a wound? you stare at them as they come away a deep, garnetine red. your hair is sticking to the blood running down your face from the wound. you sob dryly as the pain sets in, and by the gods it stings. it seems that even the air twists into your opened skin, burning sharply. you’re so lost in the mist of disbelief you barely notice when nadia comes up behind you.

• “my love?” her voice comes, softly, and you stiffen as she lays a hand on your upper arm. she withdraws it quickly as her voice breaks. “please, mc. say anything. look at me, i beg of you.” you don’t say anything for a minute before you inhale softly and turn to her.

• something in nadia breaks. she lifts shaking fingers up to her mouth as your eyes meet hers, and she takes in what she’s done to you. she’s sliced your upper-cheek open from just short of the bridge of your nose to almost the edge of your face. and the cut is deep. bruising spreads around it, in the shape of her hand, and she lets out a sob before dropping to her knees, taking your hand in hers. “by the arcana, mc, i am so, so sorry— i don’t know— i can’t— please, my love, i am so sorry,” she presses her forehead to your hand before you start to cry, sinking to your knees as well and burying your face in your hands, your shoulders shaking. you hiss softly as you draw your hand away and it comes away a glistening, wine-dark red.

• you flinch away from her as she comes to envelop you in a hug. “don’t. please,” you say softly, pulling yourself away from her. you leave bloodstains on the floor. her eyes hold inexplicable sorrow and remorse in them, as she nods haltingly, her heart breaking as she realises— you’re… afraid of her. later, she’ll bury her head into her pillow and sob her heart out but for now, she needs you to know to not be afraid of her. she loves you, you know that— and you need to know she’ll never violate the trust you put in her again.

• “mc… please. i’m so, so inexplicably sorry for what i’ve done to you. i promise it will never happen again.” her voice is soft, and she speaks to you as if you’re a wounded deer she’s found in the palace gardens, her voice breaking as she lets you see that she’s approaching you, her arms in front of her as she holds them out softly when she’s quite close to you.

• you look at her, meet her eyes with yours, and slowly settle into her embrace as she lets out a quiet sob of relief, burying her head in your hair. you pull away with a quiet gasp of pain when her hair meets your wound, and she cups your face (your good side) softly, stroking your cheek with her thumb as you close your eyes and she moves closer to you, giving you the time to pull away before her lips meet your forehead and she kisses you there gently before pressing one just above your cut and pulling you back to her, minding your cheek. you cry softly into her chest, and she does so into your hair. the two of you stay there until the blood starts to dry on your cheek and she stands, helping you up.

• “i’m taking you to the infirmary, dearest one.” “but… nadia.” you gesture to the state you’re in with a raised eyebrow. blood stains your collar and had dripped down your cheek in steady rivulets— and now your entire cheek is coated in blood. the cut itself is deep and thorough, splitting the skin so that the flesh beneath is easily visible, and the black, blue, and red flesh around your cut in the shape of nadia’s hand is enough that there is no room to doubt how your injury happened. “i’m your partner. there’s nobody else that would have done this— your entire court will know.” you look at her gently. “i can hide this.”

• and yet again, nadia’s heart is absolutely crushed. broken. shattered. “my heart, you should not have to hide what i have done. we’re going to the infirmary.”

• the entire way there, nadia weathers the stares and whispers with, for once, a bent head. you tighten your fingers around her hand— you know how important the favour of the court is. when you finally arrive, and you have to explain, haltingly, how you were injured, nadia gets a few looks of unbridled disgust as your injuries are treated. you squeeze her hand every now and again, and she looks at you gratefully. her eyes darken as you bite your lip roughly when the antiseptic meets it, your eyes watering as she strokes your hand, never taking her eyes away from you.

• afterwards, will absolutely doubt herself as a leader and a partner. no matter if you forgive her, no matter that the bruise fades and the wound heals, she’ll still always linger on your scar when she’s kissing your face, she’ll still murmur “i’m sorry, i’m so sorry, darling,” into your hair for months after.

• if anyone is so much as even vaguely disdainful towards you with respects to your scar, you’ll literally have to talk her down from having them thrown out/arrested. you forgive her, and she loves you with all of her— but when dark feelings surface now there’s absolutely nothing you can do that will even get a shadow of a rise out of her. is just calm and collected. never so much as raises her voice at you.

• will 100% look at you as you sleep and hate herself for harming you in any way.

hope you enjoyed the angst fest!! these were so long— but i’ll do the next four periodically:)

#nadia the arcana #nadia x mc #nadia headcanons #nadia satrinava #countess nadia #the arcana nadia #asra the arcana #asra x mc #the arcana angst #angst headcanon #asra headcanons #asra alzanar #the arcana asra

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sukunarii · 3 years

Text

Pairing: Yandere! Sukuna x Reader

Warnings: (Sukuna’s Era!) Yandere | Unhealthy relationship | Murder | Blood| This fic is much darker than my usual style! Please beware when you read it.

Synopsis: In the early morning, you would play your koto in your garden. It was a show for one audience: a stranger that refused to step out of the shadows. A stranger that perhaps grew too fond of you.

Wordcount: 3.0K

A/N: A koto is a Japanese instrument kind of like a harp. Also this fic might be very historical inaccurate. This fic is inspired by a poem by William Blake titled “Song: When early morn walks forth in sober grey.”

The sky was gray on the day you first spoke to him. It was early morning, you were in your garden, under the gazebo as usual where you go to practice playing your koto. You enjoyed it, for it was one of the only times where you could feel absorbed in your own world, in your own solitude and tranquility. However, you have noticed that lately, you were not so much alone.

"Behind the willow tree, I know you're there," you called out. You could see the shadow shift, but the person behind did not step out into your view.

"I see you have noticed me," a masculine voice replied. It carried a hint of playfulness.

"Of course I have, you've disturbed my peace for a few mornings now," you replied.

"Am I not welcomed?", he asks.

"What brings you here?", you asked back immediately.

His answer did not come as quick as yours, as if he chose his words carefully "I was captivated by the music you played," he complimented you.

You were flattered, you had to pause and recollect your thoughts for a moment. If he is just here to listen....well there's no harm, right?

You let out an airy laugh, "As my only audience, I supposed you are welcomed to stay."

You resumed to playing your koto. From behind the willow tree, Sukuna stole a few glances at you. Along with the beautiful music you created, you looked so effortless and absorbed in your own world while playing. A world that Sukuna could step a foot into by observing you from afar but felt too delicate for him to disturb. You were like an angel while he was a curse— a monster. He shouldn’t have any business with a girl like you.

Yet you called him, 'My only audience'...he liked the sound of that.

You were playing for him only, and he was glad that he did not even have to capture you for this. After all, a caged bird does not sing the same.

However, the serenity of dawn was disturbed by the loud and abrupt chime of the bell.

With a jolt, you stopped playing.

"Ah, that was the wake up call for the village, I got to go now," you said and got up.

From his shadow, you see him stand up too. You hesitated but decided to ask anyways, "Will you tell me your name?"

He laughs lightheartedly, "A musician does not need to know the name of their audience."

The buds on the dull brown branches were blooming into beautiful flowers that decorated the garden. Summer was approaching. It became routine, he would come to your little concert every morning. It was romantic even. You did not know who he was, but sometimes you would carry little conversations with him. You knew that he was not from the village, he said he travelled up from the valley every morning to visit you.

Knowing that he was not from the village also gave you a sense of security as you could tell him anything and everything without worrying that he would spread rumours. Afterall, you were the daughter of the richest man in the village, from suitors to enemies to your family's reputation, there was so much that you had to keep to yourself. You've learned to express these thoughts into the music you played, but being able to say them out loud in words was relieving.

He was your audience and you were his musician.

Nonetheless, most of the time, very few words were exchanged. It was just you, him, your music in the air and the garden in the surroundings.

You were wearing a purple kimono the day you asked him if you could see him. He gave you the same response as the day you asked him for his name, "A musician does not need to know the appearance of their audience."

You sighed, disappointed, "How about if I ask you as a friend?"

From the flickers of his shadow, you could tell he hesitated. Your heart started racing, in hopes that you will finally see your mysterious friend. But, you were left disappointed, "Not today, my darling. You're still not ready yet."

You looked at his shadow quizzically, what did he mean by not ready? Did he have self-esteem issues? Or a scar? Or was he really ugly...? Not that you would have minded of course, you pouted, "That's not fair. You get to see me all the time."

He chuckles, "I think this is for the better."

The urge to show himself to you or even take you for himself was very strong. However, he had to hold himself back, he didn't want you to be afraid of him. For one, you just called him a 'friend'. And he knew that if he did show himself however, this friendship would be over. You were an angel. He was a curse. Sometimes fate was cruel that way.

The green leaves that fell from the trees were fluttering in the summer breeze. Lately Sukuna has been observing you more and more throughout the day. Instead of rampaging the nearby villages, he would spend more time observing you from the outskirts of your village.

The more he observed, the more he noticed the amount of unsolicited male attention you get when you stroll in the village. Had he not been a curse, he wished he could be strolling by your side and indicating to all of those nuisances that you were his.

The village was not very large, thus, Sukuna has come to recognize most of the faces. However, one time there was a strange man with black hair that appeared in the village. Not that Sukuna cared much as long as he didn't try to flirt with his little darling — except the man did this very thing: he stopped you.

Sukuna could not hear what the man said to you, but he could certainly feel the rage rising in him. The urge to kill this man was very strong. In fact, in the heat of the moment he feels like he could kill everyone in this village to prove his point. Seeing another man try to talk to you so intimately enraged him. He has held himself back multiple times from rampaging your village and taking you home with him. Taking you as his. But for your sake, he has managed to suppress these dark thoughts. But not this time.

He approached you, or specifically the stranger menacingly...with killing intent. But once he was in hearing distance, he heard you tell the man firmly,

"I'm not interested."

The man paused. But insisted again, "Why not? I can treat you right."

"I'm interested in someone else," you told him.

Sukuna paused. Were you talking about him?

"What? No way, who might this be and how come I've never heard of this before! You're just making up lies to turn down my love," he argues back condescendingly.

You shot him a dirty look and you tried to leave but he grabs your arm, “Hold it there girl, I’m not done talking yet.”

That’s it. You slapped him. Not a weak slap, a hard one. The man's face flipped towards the other side.

"That is none of your business. Now if you would excuse me," you said angrily and turned around and left.

Sukuna smiled, 'That's my girl.'

He didn't even have to do anything.

You ran your hand through the calming blue water of the pond in your garden. You have strained your hand from playing on the koto for too much, they were sore and calloused. You tried inviting your friend to come feel the water too but he refused, insisting on remaining well hidden from your view.

"He is from this powerful family, the Zenin clan I believe. And he seems really interested in me."

Sukuna didn't answer.

"But I'll keep rejecting him, I don't like him and don't care for his advances," you rambled on, then sighed, "However I can't say the same for my parents. They are interesting in getting a hold of the powers of the Zenin clans."

"Why don't you leave the village with me?" he finally answered you.

You didn't think he was serious, but you entertained his idea, "They're not just your normal powerful families. They are very powerful as in even if we leave the village, there's nowhere left to run."

"Then I'll just kill them. Everyone of them."

You laughed bittersweetly, what could he possibly do against them when he was too shy to even show himself to you? The Zenin clan was one of the most powerful sorcerers of the eras!

"Haha, yeah that would be nice. But with all of the curses rampaging the nearby villages, we really need the Zenin clan's protection. It really sucks but they're powerful jujutsu sorcerers, it's a miracle that our village is not destroyed yet unlike the our neighbouring villages,” but swiftly, your fake optimism fades. You couldn’t play your koto today, but this stranger was your friend and talking to him gives a sense of comfort. He was listening to you and he was trustworthy.

You say softly, “If only something happened to their third son so that he would stop trying to woo me all of the time...." then, you laughed sheepishly, "Of course I'm just joking haha, I mean it's awful to wish death on someone..."

But Sukuna only heard the first part.

With summer abruptly coming to an end and winter approaching, sunrise came later every day. The sky was still black the morning you broke down crying to him. It was moonless.

"I-I know I said I wished he was d-dead, but I didn't mean it f-for real," you said between your sobs, "I just didn't w-want to marry h-him, but he got killed by a curse and I f-feel like I cursed him."

"Wasn't that what you wanted?", the intonations of his voice came out as cold as the autumn air. However, you were too absorbed in your sadness to pick up these nuances.

"No! I would never truly want anyone to die! That’s awful!”

“Now you won’t have to worry about unsolicited attention anymore,” he answered briskly

You hugged your knees closer to your chest and buried your face into them, “It didn’t make a difference...the Zenin offered their s-second son instead..., so it wasn't cancelled regardless..."

"What wasn't cancelled?", Sukuna asked.

"The wedding...”

Sukuna's jaw tightened. He was upset. Furious. You’ve mentioned that the Zenin family was interested in you but you’ve never mentioned that there was anything official. He didn't like that you didn't mention this to him at all.

"Leave with me."

This time it wasn't a question. It was an order. Yet, you refused it again.

"I can't. I can't leave my family behind like that...if I run away, the Zenin clan would bare a grudge against them, who knows what they’ll do..."

For the first time, Sukuna finally stepped out of the shadows.

But you didn't notice, nor did you see him, the obscurity of the lightless sky hid him from your vision.

"Pathetic, why would you care about family that are selling you off to strangers? This is why you humans are so weak. Being emotional for things that do not matter," he says, words dripping with menace.

Your eyes widened, alerted by the swift change of mood. Tension high in the air. He did not sound like the friend that you knew. It’s as if he was a real stranger.

"That's not true! It's wrong to be selfish, they're my family. I have to listen to them and it's for the best of the village," you tried to reason but you were worried that he could hear the slight fear in your trembling voice.

"Oh yes because the Zenin clan will protect your village from curses. You think too highly of them. When I killed that nuisance, he was crawling and crying, begging for his life. He may be a little stronger than your average jujutsu sorcerer but he was still a weak human." Sukuna was tired of keeping up his calming and human-like demeanour. He topped off his statement with a sadistic laugh.

However, you didn't answer him. Not immediately at least, you were soaking in the words he just said. You gasped.

"Y-You mean you killed him?!"

You took a step back in shock and fear. You were told that he was killed by a curse...if this stranger you've befriended was a curse and one strong enough to kill someone from the Zenin family....you were in deep trouble.

Sukuna continued laughing, "Ah, yes I killed him. I sliced his body into pieces but I preserved the head so he could be recognized. It was a masterpiece, you should of seen the expression of anguish on his decapitated head!"

All of his efforts of wanting to preserve this friendship, fearing to taint your innocence, and scared of not being delicate around you, all thrown away in the heat of the moment. It didn't matter anymore, not when annoying jujutsu sorcerers were going to get in the way and take you away from him.

You screamed, "Get away from me, you monster!"

Your fight or flight instincts kicked in, this man in front of you— no this curse in front of you— was not a friend. You have befriended something much more sinister, he was a killer. A powerful killer and from the enthusiasm in his voice, he was a sadistic one too. You turned to run back to your house.

To your surprise, he didn't follow you. He watched you and even if you can't see him, you can tell that he was smiling.

You didn't dare to leave the house the days before the wedding. You were also too scared to tell anyone about your foolish encounter with a curse. Instead, you urged your parents to push the wedding earlier. The earlier the better, much to their delight.

Luckily, you did not hear about him and it seems that things have returned to normal. But your instincts say otherwise. If you play with fire, you ought to get burned. And you seemed to have attracted the attention of something very ominous.

You were wearing white on the day of the wedding. A veil covering your face. As per tradition, you were patiently waiting for your groom in another room, waiting for him to lift the veil off your face and take you to the main ceremony room to present you to the invited guests and families. Then allow the head of the households to pronounce you as husband and wife.

Maybe it was your nervousness, it seemed that every minute went by slower. Almost as if the ceremony has been delayed. But with your eyes covered by the veil, all you could do was wait.

Then finally, you heard someone approaching you. You feel a hand gently lift the veil off your face. To your surprise, the person who brought you out of the darkness was not the second son of the Zenin family. There he was, the powerful curse that rampaged villages: Sukuna. You might be the only person who has seen all four of his arms and eyes up close and lived to tell the tale. Not that you would have anyone to tell this to.

He was covered in blood. You were not sure who's but from the silence and the lack of wounds on him, you can formulate a pretty good guess. You drew in a sharp breath and jerked away from his touch, hoping to crawl away even.

"Help!", you shouted out hoping that anyone would hear — anyone at all....wasn't half of the Zenin household here? What were they doing?

"Shh, I was late because I had to take care of some trash, but don't worry, I'm here now," Sukuna says to you. You recognized his voice right away.

You were so terrified that you didn't even notice tears started coming out of your eyes. You struggled to get away from him, you clawed at him, tried to push him away, but it didn't work. He didn't even flinch.

"(Name), stop that before you anger me," he warned you.

You didn't listen.

"You're a monster," you spat at him and you tried to slap him but he stops your hand midair, the blood on his hands imprinting onto your white kimono.

"I'm not like those pathetic Zenin, you'll have to try harder if you want to hit me," Sukuna says with a taunting voice.

Despair washes over you. He was right, if even the Zenin couldn’t win against him, then what could you do? There was no way you could win this nor escape him.

When he carried you bridal style out towards the main room of the ceremony, you’ve stopped struggling. The room was plastered with blood. You recognize some of the body limbs on the ground, the remains of the guests, of your family, of the Zenin family. They were barely remains, mostly just little pieces. You had the urge of throwing up. No one was coming to save you.

It was just you and Sukuna.

Sukuna laughs, he can hear the whiplash of the puddles of blood as he steps over them. He was proud of his work, "Just like usual, only you and me. I'm your only audience."

The blood that covered him stains onto your previously white kimono.

Sukuna always compared you to an angel. And he was a curse—a monster. You two were not meant to be, fate was cruel like that. But Sukuna can be even crueler.

You are his bride.

And it was a red wedding.

#sukuna #sukuna x reader #jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jjk #ryomen sukuna #yandere sukuna #yandere sukuna x reader #ryomen sukuna x reader #jjk x reader

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geminigirl0298 · 2 years

Text

The Course Of True Love

Relationship: Loki Odinson x Original Female Character

Summary: Loki Odinson never expected to see his mother hurrying down a hall with a smart-mouthed, soot-covered figure who was supposedly the princess of Vanaheim. He never expected her to stay more than a week, much less an entire century, and he surely did not expect their initial animosity to morph into the fluttering, tickling feeling he got in his stomach every time she was near.

Word Count: 4.2 k

A/N: I'd love to hear what you guys think so far!

Warnings: Smut later on (will be marked), 18+, loss of virginity, fingering (female receiving), oral (female receiving), unprotected sex, cursing, inappropriate language

Previous Chapter Masterlist

CHAPTER 4

Change happens when you least expect it.

It was a well-known saying, one Sigrid had heard many times from both her parents and Loki’s. Change, like death, was inevitable. Sometimes it occurred when you needed it the most. Other times as the tides went by. It could be as sneaky as a snake, as merciful as a miracle, yet Sigrid certainly did not expect it to make an appearance at breakfast that morning.

Sigrid sat in the middle chair on one side of a rounded table, Queen Frigga on the other. She was having tea in the queen’s private chambers before she and Loki went off to spend the day together. They always did so after one of his long missions away, and she had been hoping to go riding with him to the lake to collect more of those purple wildflowers that grew in abundance. She wanted to make sure she had enough to make flower crowns for her and Loki to wear to the star gazing festival in a few days.

The trickster in question was still asleep. Sigrid had snuck into his room on her way to tea and found him snoring away beneath the thick, emerald sheets. The journey must have tired him out more than he let on, and she decided to let him sleep until after her visit with the queen.

“That’s a beautiful flower,” Frigga complemented. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen them in the garden.”

Sigrid touched the soft pink petals tucked into the side of her hair with a small grin. “It’s a camellia. They grow on Midgard. Loki left it for me.” Frigga bit back a grin.

“Did Loki find you last night? He had news for you.”

“Oh, yes.” She finished sipping her tea before elaborating. “He told me about the festival and that you were integral in getting the Allfather to agree to let me go. I cannot thank you enough.”

Frigga’s hand came to rest on hers, not a hint of her age showing in the still unwrinkled skin. “Thanks are not necessary. We’ve kept you away from as much unnecessary public events as possible and I hear it is no longer needed. Your father has been keeping us updated on the situation at home. Is it true you’re thinking of returning soon?”

Sigrid nodded. “Just for a visit to see how I’ll be received.” She popped a ripe grape into her mouth, reveling in the tangy taste. Loki would have been stealing them off her plate had he been present. “I must confess I’m a bit nervous. My last encounter with Vanaheim was a tragedy, and even though papa says the people are more tolerant, there’s always a chance things will go south.”

“And what does Loki think?” Frigga peered at her from over the brim of her teacup. Sometimes when the queen made an inquiry, it felt as though she were searching for the answer to another question entirely. This was one of these times. Having been in the situation before, Sigrid knew to the only way out was to tell the truth.

“He believed I was returning for good, it seemed.” She recalled the strained look on Loki’s face the night before when she had first relayed her father’s words. “Yes. He definitely did.” The queen lifted a brow.

“Really? What did he say to that?”

“Well, I informed him that it was just a visit. He seemed awfully relieved once I did so.” Loki’s shoulders had indeed fallen when she explained the details of her supposed return. “Afterwards, he was very supportive.”

Frigga placed her cup to the side. She picked up a spoon and stirred the liquid as she spoke, an enthralled look in her eyes. “My dear, do you have any idea why he jumped to the conclusion that your return would be final?”

Sigurd shrugged. “My time here will eventually come to an end. I am the heir to the throne of Vanaheim and as much as I have come to love Asgard, I cannot possibly rule from here.” She picked up another grape, this time running her nail against the outer skin in lieu of eating it. “I suppose, even though I have always known this, the prospect of beginning my transitioning back is a bit jarring. Asgard has become my next home and there are so many people here who love me and whom I love the same.” Another pregnant pause punctuated her sentence. “I’m going to have to start a whole new life, aren’t I?”

“I’m sure it may seem like that. It’s what I had to do when I married the king.” The queen’s fingers went to the ring on her finger and began twirling it. “Before I was married, I was raised by a coven of witches. They were my family. I had friends and a life and,” here, Frigga gave a little smirk, “my fair share of gentlemen callers.”

Sigrid gave a startled laugh. “Your Majesty. Does the Allfather know?”

“Yes, but I was intact when we wed so it made no difference. And though I missed the people I grew up with, I never once regret my decision to marry Odin. We have a wonderful life together, and two sons that are great men in their own way…”

Sigrid lay her chin on her propped hand whilst Frigga spoke. She loved hearing stories about her younger days. As children, Frigga would keep her and Loki entertained for hours just telling tales of her life growing up. From finding out about her gift for seidrto harnessing it, then to meeting Odin and becoming the queen of Asgard. Frigga had had a colourful life, one filled with adventure, love, and romance. Sigrid could only dream of having the same for herself.

“I do hope the day I leave for good will not be the last time I see everyone here,” Sigrid admitted. “I’m not so naïve that I don’t get that my time will not always be my own, but surely some communication will be kept. Asgard and Vanaheim are more than allies. There is real friendship between our nations.”

Frigga made a noise of content. Her hand came to rest on Sigrid’s cheek as she spoke. “My child, you are welcome to visit here anytime, as few and far between as that may be. Your return will be followed by a few years well stagnant on Vanaheim, because whilst you are a princess, you’ve not yet learned how to be a queen. I have no doubt that once you do, you will be a force to reckon with.”

“Thank you,” Sigrid murmured. “That means more than you’ll ever know.” Frigga was one of the persons she had admired the most on Asgard, right up there with Sif, Loki, and Odin himself. To know that the woman had so much faith in her swelled her chest with pride.

“I spoke only the truth.” Frigga dropped her hand back to her lap. “And as far as your time back on Vanaheim goes, I’m sure my son will find every excuse to come see you.”

“Ah, yes.” Sigrid reached for her cup of tea. “I’m sure you’ll have to ask Heimdall to limit his use of the Bifrost.”

“My dear, I’m afraid not even the all-seeing Heimdall can keep Loki away from you.” The queen stopped to wipe the side of her mouth with a fresh napkin. “Even as children you two refused to be separated. Anyone trying to keep him on Asgard would be hard-pressed.”

Sigrid leaned forward in her chair. There was something she had been meaning to ask of Loki last night before they had gotten distracted. She planned to bring it up later that day on their outing, but she supposed running it by his mother could not hurt. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to—”

A knock on the door interrupted her. She turned, cup still in hand, to see a guard enter with his head bowed. He only looked up when Frigga addressed him. “Speak, child.”

“Pleasant morning, your majesty, your highness. I’m terribly sorry to interrupt.” He paused to look at Frigga, who waved him off, so he continued. “There’s someone here to see the princess.”

“Is it my father?” she questioned, albeit a bit puzzled. Her father had stated he would not be seeing her for a while, but who else would come to see her? “Is he here?”

“No,” said the guard, whose name she knew to be Magne. “It is not your father.”

“Well, who is it?” Frigga interjected, not in a rude manner. “Do spare us the anticipation.”

“Tis a fellow from Vanaheim, your Majesty,” answered Magne. “He says his name is Leif Erlingson.”

ooOOoo

There was a piece of paper waiting on Loki’s pillow when he awoke late that morning. It was addressed to him in Sigrid’s curly script, so he snatched it up and read the words she had written.

Lokes,

Could not bring myself to wake you from your sleep. I’m going ahead to breakfast with your mother, and I shall come fetch you after. It’s a wonderful day out, and I’ve asked Erik to ready the horses for riding.

Yours,

Sig

Loki squinted into the sunlight. It was hitting him directly in the eye. Usually when he awoke on mornings it lay at the foot of his bed. The height of the sun coupled with Sigrid’s note made him understand that he had overslept. Not wanting to keep her wanting any longer, he used his magic to clean himself and change his clothes. There would be time for a proper bath later.

He was halfway down the hall when a voice called out to him. “Loki.”

“Mother,” he greeted her approaching form. “Pleasant morning.”

“Pleasant morning, my son.” As she reached up to caress his cheek, Loki noticed that her usual smile did not reach her eyes. “How are you? Did you sleep well?”

“Very, although a bit later than usual. Is Sigrid still in your room? We’re going riding today.” Frigga’s face slid into what Loki and Thor had dubbed her ‘queen face’. Whenever there was a nobleman at court she did not particularly like or an event she was not thrilled about, their mother would pull out the placid, pleasant expression to get her through the ordeal. It was a far cry from her usual countenance, and right now it let Loki know that something was amiss. “Mother, is something the matter?”

Frigga gathered both his hands in hers. “Son, before I tell you this, I need your word that you will not go and act a fool.” Loki felt his heartbeat quicken.

“Is it Sigrid? Has she been hurt?”

“Sigrid is fine. An old friend came to Asgard to see her today.” His mother paused to gauge his reaction. “Leif Erlingson.”

Loki’s intake of breath was sharp. Frigga bit her lip, eyes holding just a bit of worry. Seeing this, he let out the air through his nostrils. “I see. Where are they, perchance?”

“Loki…”. His hands went up in surrender.

“You asked me not to act a fool and I shan’t. Sigrid’s father made mention of him in his letter and she told me he was just a friend. That’s all. Nothing to worry about.” By the end of his speech, Loki was not sure whom he was trying to reassure. He just knew that there was a sinking feeling in his gut that would not abate anytime soon. “Where are they?”

His mother hesitated. She kept looking at him for any sign that he would somehow upset the man, so he schooled his features as best as he could. He must have done a good job, he thought, since he saw her shoulders settle in defeat. “They’re in the gardens.”

“Thank you.” He made to leave, only to be stopped by a hand on his chest.

“Loki, I am asking you not to cause any trouble. Sigrid is allowed to have friends that are not you, and that you do not also know.”

Loki spread his arms wide, offended. “I would never prevent her from befriending another person. I just want to introduce myself. Show him that good old Asgardian hospitality.” Frigga watched him in disbelief. “Mother, I am not going to cause any trouble. I swear it.”

“If I were not certain that Sigrid would handle you if you did, I would be following you to those gardens myself. Do be pleasant, son.” Loki nodded. His mother gave him one last, indecisive look, then turned on her heel.

As soon as she left, Loki hightailed it to the gardens. He told himself it was because he had kept Sigrid waiting. That he wanted to apologize for oversleeping on the day they were supposed to spend together. Still, as the well-kept folly and foliage came into view, he could not help the feeling of dread that rose in his stomach.

He was made aware of voices—one Sigrid’s, the other husky and unfamiliar—which he followed to a clearing surrounded by flowered bushes. His eyes were drawn at once to the girl huddled at one edge of the marble bench. Thought he noticed the awkwardness in her position, she was indeed having a full conversation with the man opposite her. She was so engrossed, it seemed, that she did not even notice him standing at the entrance to the clearing.

“Go interrupt them!” The hiss startled Loki out of his wits. He craned his head towards the voice to see a pinched face waving him over. Ingrid was behind the bushes, slight figure preventing her from being seen. Loki was surprised he had not seen her himself what with the bright red of her hair. It was very hard to take him by surprise. He must have been too focused on Sigrid to notice.

“Child, what are you doing here?” He, too, crouched down next to her. From there he could see that she had an unobscured view of her unsuspecting victims. By the looks of the grass stains on her dress, it looked like she had been there for a while. “Are you spying on the princess?”

“Of course, I am,” replied Ingrid. “Someone has to make sure that man keeps his hands to himself. I thought it would be you, but you certainlyaren’t.”

Had anyone who was not his family or friends spoken to him like that, Loki would have had them flogged. It was a good thing he had grown fond of Ingrid over the years. The girl was as unorthodox as they came; smart mouthed, snide and talkative to a fault. Still, she possessed an innocence that he had only before seen in Sigrid, and she had a knack for reducing him to stitches by saying the oddest things.

Sigrid herself liked the girl more than she let on. Complain as she might, Loki had seen the protective nature Ingrid bought out in her. Sigrid never scolded her for mistakes or for being late. She gave her time off to be with her friends and made sure to shield her from the negative comments that others at the palace threw at her over her parentage. Their relationship was less of an employer/ employee and more of a younger/older sister. The girl was important to Sigrid, and that made her important to him.

“The princess would not approve of this,” he murmured.

A sly smile made its way onto the younger girl’s face. “And do you approve, your highness? I ask because you’ve not yet ordered me away.” Loki grinned back. This girl would be the death of some poor, unsuspecting man one day. He would enjoy every minute of it.

“That depends. Has he kept his hands to himself?”

“For the most part. He kissed her hand when she first met him but that was about it.” Ingrid peered through the bushes once again. “Oh, I do wish I could hear what they were saying. Don’t you have some sort of spell that would allow us to listen in from a distance?”

“I don’t cast spells,” Loki told her. “I’m not a wizard.” Ingrid frowned.

“Well, that’s no fun. What can you do?”

Loki scoffed. “More than hiding behind some bushes, that’s for sure.” He shifted around to brush the trimmings off his clothing. They surely would have ruined his outfit had it not been made of the finest Asgardian leather. “Fancy a stroll?”

“Umm…” Ingrid looked from his offered arm, to Sigrid, then back. “I should not. The princess is kind, but she may very well box my ears should she-”

“Brother!” The boom of Thor’s voice pulled a curse from between his lips. “Whatever are you doing behind that bush?”

“Well, this has been fun,” Ingrid chattered out. Her eyes were focused on Thor’s approaching form. “I shall take my leave now, your highness.”

Loki stared at the girl with wide eyes. Was this little minx really going to leave him to face this alone? “You’re leaving? This was your plan!”

“Yes, and now your brother has all but ruined it. You’ll let me know how it goes, yeah? Good luck!” She took off around the bushes, nimble form allowing her the speed she needed to make a quick getaway. Loki just shook his head in annoyance. Ingrid would wake up with a frog on her pillow the next morning for sure.

“Loki?” He looked up at the voice and met a familiar pair of eyes.

“Sig! Hello!”

“You’re awake. How did you sleep?” She moved over to his side, away from the man next to her. No trace of irritation laced her voice or demeanor towards him. Sigrid was genuinely glad to see him appear. He also noticed that the flower he had left her was secured on one side of her head.

“I slept well, and I got your note. That’s why I came looking for you.” He did not feel it necessary to mention his run in with his mother.

“Oh,” Sigrid tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. “Right.” She gestured to the man who now stood across from her. “Loki, this is Leif. He’s the old friend I told you about from back home.”

The entire time he had been standing there, Loki was aware that Leif was next to her. He just could not bring himself to meet the man’s eyes. Now that he was forced to, he surveyed him from head toe.

Leif was a striking man, though not the type to pique his own interest. He was almost as tall as Loki himself, with curling sandy hair cut in a style like Fandral’s. His shoulders were broader than Loki’s, back as well, muscles erring on the side of Thor’s. There was a pleasant expression on his square face as he eyed Loki. “Pleasure to meet you, your highness. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Likewise.” Loki shook his firm hand. “Although, I’m afraid I was only made aware of your existence last night.”

“Is that so?” He quirked a brow at Sigrid. “I would assume our last encounter warranted at least a mention. Or have you forgotten so easily?” Loki did not appreciate the teasing tone he took on, nor did he fancy the intimation of his words. He was even less satisfied when he looked at Sigrid for clarification to find her cheeks pink with blush. Loki blinked owlishly at her. She had made him believe this man was akin to a childhood playmate and nothing more. Why, then, was she so embarrassed?

“I- That was-”. She was saved from giving an answer by Thor, who had caught up to them. Relief washed over her face when she saw the older man. “Oh, Thor is here. Thor!”

“Sigrid, brother. Hello!” He nodded to both before stopping short at Leif. “I do not know this man. Who are you?” His tone was not rude, rather that of someone ready to make a new friend.

“This is Lake, a visitor from Vanaheim.” Loki introduced. He could not resist the purposeful screwing up of the man’s name. The way he implied that there had been a dalliance between him and his Sigrid, followed by her subsequent flustered reaction, grated his nerves more than he expected it too.

“Leif,” the man corrected, not missing a beat. “My name is Leif Earlingson.”

His brother held out one meaty hand. “Thor Odinson.”

Leif flashed his teeth. “I know who you are, Mighty Thor. I’ve heard many tales about you back home. Is is true you knocked the head off a Muspelheim giant with just one swing of your hammer? That was quite a bold move!”

Thor’s head rocked back with a laugh, and that was how Loki knew he had found that new friend. “‘Twas just a piece of his brow. I could have taken his entire head, mind you, had my father not warned me against murder.”

“Loki?” Sigrid’s fingers found his hand, burrowing their way into his clenched fist. He relaxed his hand to permit them entrance. “Do you mind if we take a rain check on today? I don’t feel right leaving Leif alone. He’s travelled from so far and he knows only me.”

“Seems like he’s making out alright.” He gestured to Leif, who was still in conversation with Thor. They were on the topic of beheading now, lost to the world around them. “What is he even doing here? Your father never said he was sending anyone.”

Sigrid gave a slow shrug. “There must have been a miscommunication. Maybe he thought I would not mind? I-” She puffed her cheeks out then blew out the air. “I don’t know. All I know is he’s here and I don’t want to be discourteous.”

“We were supposed to go riding.” Loki was aware he sounded like a petulant child. Sigrid had many male friends that were not him whom she went on outings with all the same. He knew for a fact that she and Fandral went riding when he was on missions, and Thor would take her into town with him to get sweets from that shop they liked. So why did this one, insignificant man bother him so?

“I know, I’m sorry.” Her fingers squeezed his hand. “Just let me spend the day with Leif and when he leaves tomorrow, I’m all yours again. Okay?” She gave him her most adorable smile, the one that made the corners of her eyes crinkle and outlined the dimple in her left cheek. Loki felt his heart melt immediately.

“Okay.” He returned her squeeze with one of his own to let her know he was not angry. It was one day. Loki refused to be upset about her spending one day with an old friend, who would be gone by the time he arose the next morning.

“Thank you.” She turned to the two other men, fingers still grasping his hand, and said, “Leif, would you like to see the palace? I can give you a tour before you leave tomorrow.” Loki had never heard sweeter words than the last three of her sentence.

“You’re leaving tomorrow?” Thor asked. No. No. No. “So soon? Won’t you stay for the festival? It’s only tomorrow.” Oh f-

“Festival?” Leif’s face lit up. “What festival?”

“Star gazing. It occurs every decade or so when the constellations line up perfectly,” supplied Thor. “This was to be Sigrid’s first one. Did she not tell you?” All eyes went to Sigrid.

“I would think Leif has more important things to return to,” she answered. “Father did not even tell me you were arriving today, much less how long you were staying, and-”

“And I’m taking her,” Loki interposed. He sensed Sigrid was about to being talking in circles, so he provided some aid. Plus he wanted Leif to know that the festival was his and Sigrid’s thing, and his imposition was not welcome.

“Nonsense, we can all go!” Thor placed his hands on his hips. Never had Loki wanted to stab him more. “You can join us and our friends. What say you, Sir Leif?” Loki’s free hand itched to conjure a knife.

Instead of replying, Leif looked to Sigrid. “I will go if the princess will have me.” Loki wondered what the ramifications would be if he stabbed Leif too. Maybe he could say it was an accident? No, father, I did not stab him on purpose. I was merely holding my knife and he walked into it. Repeatedly.

“I…” Sigrid looked to him for help, and he just gave her a half smile. He already knew what her answer was going to be. She just wanted to ensure he would not be put off. “Yes. Sure. That sounds lovely.”

“Great!” He reached out to take ahold of Sigrid’s hand, pulling her away from Loki and breaking their hold. Loki just managed to refrain from tightening his grip and beginning a game of ‘Tug of Sigrid’. “Now, should we go riding after the tour? I’ve heard about this lake and...”

Yes, Loki thought as he watched their retreating forms. My brother is definitely getting stabbed today.

Chapter 5

Taglist: @mischiefsarawr @howdidurhammergrowchris @speedy-object @delightfulheartdream @queen-of-mischief @sharris8 @thelittlepoetprincess @marygoddessofmischief @cosplayingwitch

#loki smut #loki x ofc #loki laufeyson #loki fanfic #loki odinson #loki x original female character #loki au #marvel au #thorau #best friends to lovers

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adorerdraco · 4 years

Text

Healing Heart ✧ Draco x Reader Mini-Series PART 3

PART 1

PART 2

Summary: PART 3 ! of Draco accidentally falling in love with reader during his sixth year (HBP) and finally allowing the relationship to blossom!

Warnings: just the tiniest bit of angst, crying (ofc), Draco sad for a little :(

Words: 7.3K (THIS IS SO LONG OMG BUT MEMORIES IN ITALICS)

A/N: PART THREEEE !!! I think this is my favorite piece of writing in this series and the LONGEST. I know series start losing an audience after the first part but I hope that those who have been following this enjoy this one as much as I do ! I went off the HBP script bc i wanted Draco to live it up and be happy and playful ! also i do not own gif.

The sky was a darkening orange, the sun casting its last glowing light of the day as it quickly began to disappear behind the Hogwarts castle. Small birds and other flying creatures passed overhead, going towards their homes in the trees before nightfall, chirping and singing as they did. The sound of wind rustling through leaves from trees and overgrown plants brought a peace in the air between the couple.

Draco turned his head to the side, a soft smile forming on his lips as he observed you. The both of you were on your backs lying on a spot of grass under a small tree, a different tree than the one the two of you had your fall out by a few months prior, requested by you. Draco thought back to a couple weeks ago when you and him had been walking around the outskirts of the school and you had seen it in the distance.

“That tree is cursed,” you muttered bitterly, eyeing it behind Draco’s head. He turned back to look at it and grimaced.

“I’m still terribly sorry about that, love,” he slipped his hand into yours, bringing the pairing up to his lips and gently placing a kiss on your skin. “We’ll find a new spot.”

“Effective immediately,” you nodded in agreement. “Plus, my friends dared me to climb it last year and I fell off and broke my arm and leg. I hate that tree.”

“Arm and leg?!” He stared at you in disbelief, “Merlin’s sake, Y/N, it’s shocking how clumsy you are.”

“You should be glad I’m clumsy,” you retorted, “you wouldn’t have been graced with my presence now if it wasn’t for me tripping into you.”

“I suppose that’s true,” he smiled, throwing an arm over your shoulder and pulling you into his side before pressing a kiss to your temple. “Who would’ve thought that I’d be a fool for the klutz who sprained my finger and busted my lip on two separate occasions before we’ve properly met.”

“On accident!” You exclaimed horrified, stifling a laugh as he did the same.

Your eyes were closed, peacefully allowing yourself to fully bask in the sunlight that was kissing your skin in its golden hues and warmth. Draco turned onto his side, propping himself up with his elbow so he could admire you better. The longer he looked at you, he felt a shiver run down his spine and a foreign queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach appear that he could only describe as tons of tiny blue cornish pixies wreaking havoc on his insides. In simpler terms, butterflies.

“Are you staring at me again, Malfoy?” You hummed quietly, your eyes still closed as you questioned him.

“No, why would I?” He answered with a playful arrogance, the grin on his face widening as your eyebrows furrowed at his answer.

“You’re rude,” you mutter, trying to fight back a smile. “I think I remember you doing the same thing earlier and telling me, and I quote, ‘I can’t believe someone so beautiful is real,’ end quote,” you tried mocking his haughty accent as you quoted him which only earned you a laugh from Draco.

“That sounds nothing like me, you must have me confused with some other poor bloke,” he snickered, a laugh leaving his mouth immediately after.

Your hand came up and playfully slapped his chest, a smile finally breaking onto your features. “I love hearing you laugh. It makes me happy.”

He slowly leaned over, his face hovering over yours before he leaned down even lower and gently pressed small kisses onto your still closed eyelids, your nose, your forehead and then finally your lips. Your face scrunched after every kiss, except for the last one which you happily returned.

“You make me happy, I have you to thank for the laughs,” he said quietly, his hand reaching up to smooth back the flyaway hairs on your face, “and for several other things. I don’t think I could ever thank you enough.”

You finally open your eyes, peering up at him with a loving gaze. It honestly felt like you had opened your eyes in heaven and an angel was leaning over you, greeting you at the gates of paradise, that angel being the platinum blond boy, his warm gray eyes staring back at you with the same look you had in yours. It was a sight to behold, behind Draco, the sun had gone down, leaving a haze of purple clouds and a pinkish sky, the leaves from the tree above swaying gently in the cooling breeze of dusk. As breathtaking as the scene was, Draco outshines it.

He looked so much more different than he did a little over a month ago, the day he had almost had his meeting with death. His skin had regained some color, he was still pale, but the pink undertones he always used to have had returned. His eyes were a lighter gray, almost a sky blue as they now held a warmth he had been so evidently missing. The bags under his eyes were still there, but not as deep or as dark as they had been before.

A smile reappeared on your face, your palm finding its way to his cheek and resting it there. He leaned into the tender touch, his eyes fluttering closed as he enjoyed the feeling. It felt like a movie, or a book, or a dream, your heart was doing happy flips in your chest as you tried to rationalize how in the world you were in this current position. It was bliss.

“I can’t believe someone so beautiful is real,” you murmur, stealing the compliment he had used on you earlier in the day. Your palm moved up towards his hair, letting your fingers rake through his hair as he smiled.

“Hey, that was my line,” he mumbled.

“No, I got it from some other poor bloke,” you laugh, dropping your hand from his hair. He leaned away from you and lied back down on the grass, an exaggerated sigh leaving his lips as he closed his eyes.

“He sounds dodgy, you should probably stay away from him.”

You rolled over on your stomach and onto Draco’s side, your head falling over his chest as his arm underneath you came up to rest on your lower back. You looked up at him, straining your neck so that your lips could meet his. He lifted his head up slightly, meeting you halfway. Like every time you kissed him, the world around you stopped and it was like every single good thing in the world came together in that one moment. You could always feel the love in his kisses, wordlessly letting you know how much he adored you and cared for you. Just as he could tell the same with yours.

You pulled away, opening your eyes to see his slowly flutter open. Both of you holding that same dazed and dopey in love look that was there every time your lips left his.

“I could never stay away from him.”

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

Draco let out an irritated huff, marching his way down to the dungeons with his robe billowing around his legs with purpose, similar to how the long and greasy raven haired professor’s often flailed about.

Speaking of said professor, Draco was headed towards Snape’s office after receiving word from one of his Slytherin friends that their Head of House had requested him. The idea of talking to Snape right now made him feel dizzy, knowing full and well he was going to be reminded of his painful duties and be ripped out of the short-lived paradise he has been living in recently.

He didn’t want to leave his bliss, at all. He even neglected mending the vanishing cabinet for a while just so he could put all his attention and efforts on you, something he found to be much more important and rewarding. The plans for Dumbledore, especially, strayed even further from his mind as if they didn’t even exist to him at all.

When he reached the office, the door was already open and he saw Snape standing over his desk, looking down at some papers he had scattered over the old battered wooden surface.

“Mr. Malfoy,” Snape acknowledged lowly, not looking up from the papers, “close the door behind you and have a seat.”

Draco walked in slowly, taking in a deep breath and did as he was told, shutting the heavy wooden door once he forced himself to go inside. He made his way over to one of the empty chairs near the desk and begrudgingly sat down, letting out quietly the shaky breath of air he was holding in. This was the last place he wanted to be.

“Tell me, Draco,” the Professor finally looked up from his papers to give Draco a pointed look, “how is the vanishing cabinet coming along?”

“Fine.”

“Is that so?” He drawled out accusingly, taking short and careful steps around the desk. “Would you say it is able to transport individuals successfully?”

“I haven’t quite gotten it there yet, Professor,” Draco answered weakly, letting his eyes wander around the room and looking at all the different jars lined up against the walls just so he wouldn’t have to make eye contact.

“With that information, it appears to me then, that it is not fine.”

“I’m working on it.”

“Hardly,” Snape sneers, stepping even closer to the chair the cowering boy was sitting in. “Do you think me a fool, Draco? Do you think that I do not know what you have been doing with all of your time? I see that look in your eyes, you’re in love, and stupidly so.”

Draco fearfully looked up at him, seeing a rage beginning to build up in the black of his professor’s eyes. He stayed silent, the sound of his heart rapidly thumping against his chest was the only thing he could hear. It felt as if he were going to explode with panic.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about, Professor,” Draco lied through his teeth, locking eyes with the man as he stared him down.

Before he could blink, Snape had taken one long stride towards him, placing both hands on either side of the arms of the chair, Draco immediately leaning as far back as he could as his big-nosed teacher got in his face.

“Don’t lie to me, boy!” He snarled, “I know what love looks like.”

Draco was breathing hard now, his chest rising and falling painfully as his heart began to beat impossibly faster.

“This is no time for fun and games, especially for love,” he grabbed Draco’s left arm, forcefully rolling up his sleeve and flashing the skin upwards towards the blond’s face, “I’m afraid all of that ended the moment you had taken this mark.”

“I didn’t ask for this,” he cried, the Dark Mark was staring angrily at him and he twisted his arm out of the hard grasp it was in, rapidly pushing his sleeve down again so he wouldn’t have to look at it any longer.

“You don’t have a choice!” Snape stepped away from him and looked down at the boy who was quickly breaking down before him. “Your fate and that of your parents, is on the line. Eventually, it will be Miss Y/L/N’s fate in that position as well. There is only so much I can do to help you, Draco. Remind yourself that the Dark Lord doesn’t tolerate or take kindly to any sort of foolery.”

Draco shook violently with tears and anger, his head falling into his hands as all his realities began to hit him all at once. This is exactly the pain he was trying to avoid. He knew he would have to face it again eventually, but not this soon. He figured he would have more time with you. More time to live in the fantasy that left him feeling so euphoric when he got to his dorm at night after a long day of classes with you filling up the spaces in between. He wished he had more time to enjoy his love, the love that was so beautiful and light, so effortless. He wished he had more time to be happy.

Now here he was, stuck on a path he couldn’t change or control. A path that was forced upon him and had no choice or decision he could make. He often wonders what his life would be like now, if the Dark Lord never came back, his father never went to Azkaban, he never quit quidditch, his mind never tainted in evil plans for murder and destruction. He often imagines that life. He imagines you, waiting for him after a quidditch game, cheeks rosy from the frosty wind that whipped around the stands, smiling up at him so beautifully as he proudly took you into his arms after he caught the Golden Snitch and won Slytherin the Quidditch cup. He would be going to an after party at the common room, everyone praising him and his skills and being jealous of him and the girl on his arm.

He didn’t see it, but Snape gave him a small empathetic look, remembering his own pain and loss at the hands of Voldermort.

“I suggest for you to shift your focus to the more important matters at hand, Mr. Malfoy,” Snape says in a low voice. “You may leave.”

Draco roughly wiped away his tears before he jumped up from the chair and rushed towards the door, pushing it open with his body as he nearly ran out of the dungeons and up towards the Great Hall where dinner was being served.

Once he entered the hall, his eyes searched for you at your house table, knowing you’d be there with your friends. His eyes scanned up and down the rows a good two times before he finally saw you, throwing your head back in laughter as everyone talked. The pure joy on your face made him feel the tiniest bit lighter and his breathing a fraction easier.

Your friend noticed him first, tapping your arm vigorously as she pointed in his direction. You turned, your eyes meeting his frazzled ones and you frowned when you realized he had been crying. You threw your napkin down onto the table, hastily slipping out of your seat as you took quick long strides over to him. When you got to him, you slipped your hand into his and walked the two of you out of the hall in a hurry and headed into an empty corridor.

“What happened?” you ask, your voice laced and dripping with worry and concern as your hands reached up to cup his face. “Are you okay?”

Draco let the tears fall again, crying even harder at the your question. He was not okay and soon, neither were you going to be. On his way to you, he made a decision to do something. It was dumb and reckless, but in his mind, he knew it had to be said and done. If there was any sliver of a chance in the future where the two of you lived somewhere near happily ever after, he knew he couldn’t get there if he kept lying to you.

“Y/N, I need to tell you something,” he croaked out, “and you’re not going to like it.”

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

The silence surrounding the top of the astronomy tower was thick and dreadful. The faint moonlight above Hogwarts had cast ghostly shadows onto your faces and illuminated the grimaces you both shared. A cold and bitter wind passed through, picking at and numbing the exposed skin that neither of you cared to acknowledge. You sat on the floor across from him, an empty look filled with tears pooling in your wide eyes. He had told you everything. He pleaded for you to say something, to react, but you couldn’t. You just sat there, frozen and mumbling an almost incoherent ‘I need to think.’

Out of all the things you expected him to tell you, this was not one of them.

It all finally made sense to you. The broken down and erratic state he has been in for months on end was for a very obvious reason now. It was hard for you to grasp at first, wondering how he could ever agree to be a part of something that was so dark and evil. Your mind temporarily mourned the boy, feeling as though that it was over for you two. But the longer you thought, the more it became clear to you that this was in fact, not his choice. It was the first thing he even said to you before he told you about his status as a Death Eater and all the dreadful things he has to accomplish.

And as you stared deeply into his pained eyes, you knew it was true. The Draco you had fallen in love with and are still just as in love with, was the same one sitting before you. Sharing something with you that could potentially jeopardize his life, his family’s life and everything else for the worst. He had trusted you with his darkest and most deepest secret. And it took you less than five minutes to process it all, your final thoughts coming together calmly and without hesitation.

“This doesn’t change anything for me,” you say finally, scooting yourself closer to him and taking his hands in yours. “I still love you all the same.”

A breath of relief left his lips, a sharp and painful ache in his heart suddenly easing drastically the second he heard your words. It was the same relief someone feels when waking up from a nightmare or just bad dream in general, a tranquility settling in that none of it was real and you can let your mind relax.

“But you must see me differently now then?” he then asked with a frown, his relief leaving his body again as his mind hit him with all sorts of pessimistic thoughts and ideas. “I’m not as good as you thought me to be.”

“I do see you differently,” you placed a finger under his chin, gently moving his face so that he could look in your eyes and you noticed the hurt that flashed in his storming gray’s. “I see now that you’re so brave, and so strong. I think it takes a lot of courage to be in your situation and not lose yourself completely. The weight of the world is on your shoulders, but you’re still you and you should be proud of that. You are just as good as I thought you to be.”

He blinked back the tears that had gathered and pricked at his eyes, his hand reaching up gently onto the back of your head as he leaned forward so that now your foreheads were resting against each other.

“You really are the best thing that has ever happened to me, you know that?” He states quietly. He placed a kiss on the space between your eyebrows, letting his lips linger intimately as the two of you relished in the feeling of being so close to one another, mind and body. “I love you.”

“I love you,” you repeated affectionately.

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

Weeks had gone by in a blur since the night at the astronomy tower, your relationship with Draco had only grown deeper and more meaningful since then. Instead of the ill-fated news tearing you apart, it brought you more closer together than you could have ever imagined. It was as if your souls were finally bare to one another, meeting and embracing each other lovingly on the astral planes.

The dynamic had changed, but only for the greater good as you had encouraged him to spend as much time as he could on the vanishing cabinet. It wasn’t like you wanted him to fix it, but you knew it would come at a great cost if he didn’t so he needed to. You thought back to a couple days after he had told you his duties, frowning at the remembrance of the shame in his voice as he explained everything to you.

“I think I’ll just leave it to rot in the room of requirement,” he muttered bitterly, his eyes focused on his thumb running over the softness of your knuckles. “I’ll just set it on fire and say it was an accident.”

“As much as I’d love for you to do that,” you sigh, “it would be like sentencing yourself to torture and death.”

Draco chuckled darkly, shaking his head. “I’m already headed there.”

“No,” you interject, “you’re not.”

He stayed quiet, trying to get the painful images out of his head that his mind was currently putting on display for him. No matter how many times you told him, he was never able to fully get rid of his pessimistic thoughts.

“He is going to find a way in, eventually,” you lean your head onto his shoulder and he tilts his head to the side so that it rests against yours. “It might as well be you who does it. You need to get onto his good side and from what you’ve told me, it’s only obvious he’s wary of your family.”

“He doesn’t have a good side,” he scowled. “He currently has my father locked in Azkaban, my mother in distress, and me doing his dirty work from within this school. He’s more than wary of us, he’s punishing us already.”

“I’m sorry,” you whisper, squeezing his hand reassuringly. He sighs, squeezing your hand back.

“It’s alright, love, nothing I can do about it anyways,” he trails off sadly. “But you’re right, I have to do it. I have to fix it.”

From then on, he had split his free time between mending the cabinet and being with you. It was hard for him as it was for you, but either of you knew there was no other way.

You were sitting by yourself next to the Black Lake, hugging your knees to your chest as you mindlessly played with the overgrown weeds you were sitting in. Your wand danced over a patch of dead flowers, wordlessly casting a spell you had learned in Professor Sprout’s class that brought life back into the wilted daisies.

You missed your favorite Slytherin, still not used to not the sudden changes in his schedule that kept him away from you. Your friends obviously kept you company, but there were times like this when you just wanted to be alone and sulk. And sometimes always, you just really missed Draco.

All you wanted at the moment was to hear his laughter, to feel his arms wrap around yours and give you gentle kisses all around your face as you giggled underneath him. To hear him whisper to you how beautiful you are and how much he loves you. It was like a cliche love story that you couldn’t get enough of, it was your life. And you never knew that those same stories you always laughed and made fun of but secretly deeply desired, would come into fruition with Draco Malfoy, the boy you’d had a crush on since third year who never even knew you existed until this year.

Despite everything life had thrown at the two of you in these short but also long months, you had formed something so intense and real that most people would never get to experience, especially someone your age.

You heard a faint flapping of wings get louder as it approached, the shadow of a familiar owl appeared from behind you and you turned to look at it. It was Aquila, Draco’s beautiful and large eagle owl swooping over you before landing in front of you, dropping a letter at your feet. You gave her a little pat on the head, and she closed her eyes gently before she backed away and flew off back towards the owlery.

You unrolled the small piece of parchment and smiled as you read it.

Just broke something in the room of requirement for tripping over it and it reminded me of you. Now I can’t stop thinking of you. I’m rushing to finish now, I’ll see you soon. xx DM

The parchment was rolled back up and tucked into the pocket of your robe, a happy sigh slipping past your lips as you rested your chin on your knees. Your eyes landed on some familiar glowing fishes in the water near you from a few days ago and you allowed your mind to slip into the memory, yet again.

Draco lied across your lap, your fingers dancing around in his hair as he hummed in content. He loved it when you did that and you always made sure to play with it any chance you got when the blond mop was vulnerable to you.

He had met up with you after a shower and skipped styling his hair, the platinum strands freely going in their natural direction of falling over his forehead. You ran your hand towards his ends, pushing and slicking them back into his old signature hairstyle from when he was little.

A laugh tumbled from your lips at the sight and he peered up at you, rolling his eyes when he realized why you thought it was funny and sitting up to flatten his hair back down.

“You think my hair is funny, do you?” He accused with a pointed look, but you noticed the laugh that he was trying to hold back. You shook your head ‘no’ while still laughing and he finally smiled.

He lurched forward, playfully and gently tackling you down into a fluffy bed of dandelions, a ridiculous amount of the puffs from the flowers flying up into the air around you and into the dark night sky. He attacked your collarbones with kisses, your shoulders, up your neck and then your lips. You loved when he would do that, leaving multiple lingering kisses along your skin so he made sure to do it any chance he got, just as you did the same with playing with his hair.

After he was done snogging you, he sat up again and pulled you up with him, a comfortable silence falling between you two. The comfort only lasted a minute or two before a thought had trickled its way into your head as your hands sat over his forearms.

“Can I see it?” you asked quietly, afraid of sounding insensitive or offending him you immediately added, “only if you’re comfortable, of course.”

Draco followed your gaze onto his arm and he stiffened, his blood all of a sudden feeling cold in his body. Not once since he’d gotten the mark has he looked at it for longer than a couple seconds, absolutely loathing the fact that it was permanently etched into his skin. He was hesitant, wondering if you would be disgusted by it and him, but you looked at him with such a genuine concern and curiosity that he couldn’t say no.

He fiddled with his sleeve a little, rolling it up towards his elbow and facing the mark towards you so that you could observe it. Instead of looking at it, he looked only at you and your facial expressions, he wanted to see exactly what you thought in the eyes that were the window to the soul.

The mark looked as if it were a scar, it rose a little bit above the rest of his milky skin, angry and swollen. Your fingers ghosted above it, Draco shivering underneath the closeness of your touch. He felt your hand tenderly stroke the mark, your finger tracing its outline with a delicate pressure. The next thing you did was lean down, delicately and lovingly placing a kiss onto something that only represented hate and evil. The complete opposite of everything that you were.

“This doesn’t define you, Dray,” you say warmly as you pull away. “I know you hate it and I know it hurts to see it. But it’s not you. And one day, it might be so faint that it’ll just be a reminder of how you survived and got through the most difficult point of your life.”

He nodded, staying silent as he took in your words. They made him feel better because if that what was you believed, who was he to say it was wrong? He desperately wanted your words to be true, so he happily accepted them and let them relax the part of his mind that constantly doubted himself.

You rolled down his sleeve for him before settling yourself onto his lap and pulling him into a hug. His hands rested themselves on your lower back, one almost slipping down onto your butt before you reached behind you and raised his hand back up as he snickered. He let his head lie against your chest, the even and soft thumping of your heart calming him instantly and he sighed, pressing a kiss into the exposed skin above your shirt.

You reached down beside you and plucked two dandelions from the ground, holding them up and twirling them around in your fingers.

“Muggles like to say that if you make a wish on a dandelion and blow on it, your wish will come true,” you hum, making him look up at you in confusion.

“That sounds ridiculous,” he mumbles. You give him one of the dandelions and smile.

“You never know until you try,” you raised an eyebrow before giving him one. He eyed it with doubt and you pouted, silently pleading for him to do it with you. “Just close your eyes, think of your wish and blow.”

He waited until you squinted your eyes shut, he didn’t, but as he watched you he wordlessly made his wish. He wished that he could have moments like this with you for the rest of his life, moments of loving nirvana. Ironically, you had wished for the exact same thing.

When you opened your eyes, you blew onto the flower and he did the same with his. The both of you watched the fluffs flail about in the wind around you until they were carried higher and higher up into the starry night sky and out of your sights. You held the boy underneath you tighter against you and he followed, his hand again trying to land on your butt but you stopping it again and both of you laughing.

“What did you wish for?” He asked, the question muffled against your sweater.

“If I tell you then it won’t come true.”

“That’s rubbish.”

The afternoon was fleetingly turning into evening, the sun beginning its descent behind Hogwarts and a number of thick clouds had formed in the sky that blocked the beautiful orange sunsets you loved.

“I knew I’d find you here,” Draco announced his presence from behind you, a weird tone in his voice as he approached you. He plopped himself down beside you and gave you a long affectionate kiss before pulling away from you with a half-hearted smile.

“You seem very cheery,” you teased, poking his frown with your finger before forcing his lips up into a smile and he let out an airy chuckle. “What’s wrong?”

“Do you want the bad news or good news first?”

“Bad.”

“I think I’ve finally fixed the cabinet.” He said suddenly.

“Oh,” was all you could say as you processed his accomplishment. His hand reached for yours, interlocking your fingers with his as he anxiously waited for your answer. “So what’s going to happen next?”

“I’m not sure yet,” he answers honestly. “I suppose I’ll let Snape know and then eventually You-Know-Who will become aware. But I don’t know what chaos lies ahead. I don’t even know if it’s fully mended, I’m waiting until tomorrow to test it out.”

“Why not today?” you ask quietly. You felt your hand beginning to nervously sweat in his as each second of silence passed by.

“I wanted to have one last normal day,” he looks up at you and smiles faintly. You return it even though you felt as though you were nearly about to empty out your stomach from earlier’s lunch. “Before everything changes.”

“So then, what’s the good news?” You desperately wanted to change the topic, hoping that his good news would be enough to ease your panicked mined for the moment and luckily, it did.

“You and I are spending all day and night together,” he responds happily.

“Who said that’s good news?” you eye him mockingly, a goofy smirk making its way onto your lips, your mood improving instantly as you thought of the next 24 hours with your love. He gaped at you in fake shock, blinking slowly as he tried to come up with a comeback that would stump you.

“You know what, Y/L/N, perhaps I’ll ask Pansy instead, she’s been rather fond of me again lately,” he snickers, a look of horror replacing your previous teasing.

“Absolutely not!”

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

You weren’t aware of how sleepy you were until you had gotten back to Hogwarts, a clock on a faraway wall in the dungeons displayed 1:11 AM. You were stopped right outside the Slytherin common room, Draco pinning you up against a wall as his lips passionately and lovingly danced with yours. Your hands were tangled in his ridiculously soft hair as he gripped onto your hips tightly.

This was the way the two of you should have been living, every day, stupidly in love like teenagers and having fun.

The whole day had gone by in a flash. Draco had taken you out for an evening stroll around Hogsmeade, stopping at The Three Broomsticks for butterbeer and food where you talked about everything and anything, avoiding any negatives completely and only talking of childhood memories from home and school or of funny stories that had come to mind. He had then taken you to a small jewelry shop where you admired every piece of gem in there and basically begged Draco not to buy you anything which he repeatedly tried to argue against.

Somewhere along the line, you found a small group of stray cats, dragging Draco by his hand to the little bundle of kittens hidden in a hollowed tree stump. One hissed at the two of you, backing far into the corner of the the stump as it protected the rest of its siblings behind it.

You had reached into your pocket, getting out your wand and pointing it towards the ground in front of them and whispering some spell Draco had never heard of. Suddenly, a small pile of cat food had appeared in a heap on the ground and the two of you watched as the leader of the litter had began to inspect it.

“Where did you learn that?” he laughs in astonishment as the kittens began to hurriedly munch on it.

“I found it in a book about cats in the library one day while I was bored,” you said with a sheepish smile. “Nice to know it came in handy.”

You then began walking around again, this time further away from the castle and the little village and more near the Forbidden Forest. This was the Hogwarts equivalent of long romantic walks along the beach. It was there where you found a small cliff and sat down to rest with your legs dangling wildly over the edge.

“With your track record, you should reconsider the way you’re sitting, darling,” Draco chuckles, his eyes peering over the edge and into the dark and rocky surfaces below before as he shuddered in fear.

“Relax,” you say, pushing yourself back from your spot and standing up before looking up at him. “You really think I’m that clumsy that I’ll fall off a cli-”

Draco reached out for you before he could even process that a chunk of the cliff had given out from underneath you as you stood. You fell into his embrace, the both of you staring down in terror at the tumbling piece of earth, watching it crash and explode as it hit a sharp boulder below. Draco let out a breath of relief, giving you a ‘I told you so’ look.

“Yeah, alright,” you nodded. “I think I’m ready to go home now.”

So now here you two were, still snogging in the dungeons without a care in the world. You were so wrapped up in each other that you hardly noticed the sound of Filch approaching nearby, the sound of his lantern accidentally falling behind a corridor made you finally rip away from the kissing, looking in the direction of the noise.

“It’s Filch!” you hiss before pushing Draco towards the entrance of the common room. He quickly said the password and slipped the two of you inside once the stone had opened up, quietly laughing to each other as you heard Filch yell a distant, ‘students out of bed!’

Draco wasted no time in taking your hand and sneaking you into his Prefect room, the both of you haphazardly tumbling inside out of panic when you had seen another Slytherin passing by somewhere near the staircase to the room. You landed into the room with a ‘thud’ and Draco underneath you with his face twisted in that of pain.

“Oh no, please don’t tell me I’ve done it again,” you scattered off of him, grabbing onto his hand that he had landed on with too much force as he tried to stop both of your falls. His wrist was staring to swell up a strong pink and then red as you felt around the bone.

“You’ve done it again,” he laughs quietly through the pain at seeing your reaction. You gave him a scowl before reaching for your wand at drawing it at his injury.

He admired you as you handled his wrist with the same caring and tender touch that you gave him the last times you had healed him from the accidental trips of fate that had been thrown onto him, literally.

You breathed out a quick, “episkey,” and let relief wash over you as his sprained wrist healed to its original glory and he flexed it back and forth just for your benefit.

“Thank you, my little personal healer and injurer,” he stood up, pulling you with him and gave you a tight embrace that you lazily returned with an exaggerated frown.

“On accident!”

“I’m only joking, love,” he chuckles before giving you a kiss that made up for his teasing. “Also, I got you something.”

You raised an eyebrow, stepping away from him as he reached into his coat pocket. He pulled out a small velvet rectangular box before handing it to. You took it in your shaky hands, opening it up to be greeted with a glittering silver band bracelet, glowing green emerald jewels going all around it. You gasped at its beauty, pulling it out of its box as you looked up at Draco as he beamed at you.

“I know you said not to buy anything, but I had to.”

You flung yourself into his arms, kissing him all over his face as he laughed from underneath you.

“I love it, Dray,” you gleamed, carefully slipping the band onto your wrist. “Thank you.”

He nodded, smiling to himself at satisfaction that he had gotten something for you at the jewelry shop even though you insisted that he didn’t, he couldn’t help himself. Eventually, he thought, he would be adding a diamond ring to your new collection of expensive accessories from him.

You let your attention focus onto the space around you, it was dark and a little disorganized seeing as he was hardly ever in there now, only to sleep. You had been in his room plenty of times recently to talk or if he was feeling upset but this was the first time you were going to actually sleep through the night with him. You weren’t even prepared for the impromptu slumber party, but it didn’t bother you all too much as your boyfriend passed you one of his sleeping shirts and shorts.

When you clambered into bed with him, legs entangled and bodies pressed up against each other, you sighed sleepily in content. You laid in silence, the sound of steady breathing and a tick and tock of a clock nearly sending you into a deep sleep while you admired the new bracelet on your wrist until your brain started conjuring up thoughts of the very near future.

“It’s all going to be different now, isn’t it?” you mumbled.

He waited a moment before responding, the same thoughts began to run through his mind and he sighed, letting out a breathless, “yes.”

There was another moment of silence, a painfully quiet one as now the both of you had started to think and torture yourselves even further.

“I’m scared,” you whisper timidly, the grip you had on Draco’s shirt got tighter.

“I am too,” his head turned to meet your eyes, the same wide eye look being held in them that he’s been seeing a lot of that day. “But I promise that no matter what happens, I’m always going to love you. Forever.”

Tears had accidentally slipped from your watery eyes and you buried your face in his neck to inhale his scent to calm yourself down. It was weird in theory, but there was something about the mix of his cologne and minty smelling soap that relaxed your whole body from whatever would be bothering you.

“I say this all the time,” he started again, his hand mindlessly played with your hair as he spoke. “But thank you, for helping me, healing me and not just on the outside. I owe you so much and I love you so much.”

“I love you, too,” you cried relentlessly now, “so, so much.”

Draco stayed quiet, his own tears falling now but he didn’t want to make the moment sadder than it already was, so he sucked it up and gave the top of your head a long and amorous kiss while you cried yourself to sleep in his arms.

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

It was morning, a heavy set of clouds rested over the castle in an eerie and gloomy way. You took it as a sign that everything was going to end up that way, dark and melancholic. It was sad, being the only two people as of right now who knew what was coming to Hogwarts in maybe a couple hours or days time. But there was nothing you could do but hope for the best and silently place your hope that Harry Potter would save the day as he somehow always did. You didn’t dare tell Draco that, however and as much as you disliked Harry for nearly killing your lover not too long ago, you needed to believe that there was hope for a future with no Voldermort.

You walked timidly behind Draco as he guided you to the room of requirement. Your eyes were glued to the back of his perfectly styled head and iron pressed black suit and if you weren’t in such upsetting circumstances, you would have let yourself admire him longer, but you couldn’t quite focus on anything other than what lied ahead.

He had asked you to come with him to test the vanishing cabinet, wanting your support as he brought life to the thing that would bring destruction to the beloved school. You stood quietly, watching the very large doors of the room appear on the wall as Draco called for it silently.

You had never been in the room before and that was apparent when you looked at everything in awe, seeing all the forgotten artifacts and knickknacks for the first time that were piled onto each other for miles on end. He lead you through the maze of objects until you stopped at a tall and ashy gray run down wardrobe, his other hand grabbing onto the corner of the drape that was feebly covering it and pulled it down in one swift motion causing a pile of dust to fly into the air around you, making you feel suffocated all of a sudden as you stared at the revealed cabinet.

He let go of your hand, reaching into the pocket of his blazer as he pulled out a small green apple to place inside the middle of the cabinet. You watched carefully as he closed the doors of it and pressed his wand up against the opening, his eyes fluttering closed as he thought of the spell.

“Harmonia Nectere Passus,” a small whooshing sound passed and Draco opened his eyes to check if the apple was still behind the doors. The apple was gone, and your heart sank in fear. This was it. He took one deep breath before shutting the doors closed and placing his wand against them once again.

“Harmonia Nectere Passus,” he whispered, “Harmonia Nectere Passus.”

The whooshing sound came back and he slowly grabbed the handle of one of the doors, his hand reaching inside of the cabinet and pulling something out. He turned around to face you, his skin paling in fear, the apple was back in his hand and as he turned it, you spotted the new clean bite around its side.

You inhaled sharply, your heart thumping rapidly as you realized what this meant.

“You fixed it.”

PART 4

TAGLIST: @bluesunflowersz @viirgobbyy @blueleonor @thefandomplace @natt-nih @angelofslytherin @dreamyvcid @ohhsheet-blog-blog (AHHH IM SORRY IF IM FORGETTING SOME OF YOU ;( !!!)

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wiypt-writes · 3 years

Text

Rock N Roll People In A Disco World

Part 5- Nobody Dance On A Sad Disco

Intro: Paul doesn’t react well when your logical and practical side suggests you postpone your wedding…

Pairing: Paul Diskant x Reader

Warnings: Bad language, Smut (NSFW, 18+)

Word Count: 7k

Disclaimer: This is a pure work of fiction and classified as 18+. Please respect this and do not read if you are underage. I do not own any characters in this series bar the reader and any other OCs. By reading beyond this point you understand and accept the terms of this disclaimer.

Rock ‘n’ Roll People Masterlist // Main Masterlist

Part 4

"I just don't understand why you think this is such a big frickin' deal, Paul." You said with exasperation. This argument had been carrying on for a good twenty minutes and so far, the only thing you'd accomplished was going in circles like a NASCAR driver.

“You don’t understand?” He scoffed, hands on his hips, “seriously? You don’t see why I’m slightly pissed off you wanna postpone our wedding?” "You can't continue to tell me that not pushing everything back a few months makes the most sense right now. In a month’s time we were supposed to be going away for our stags, and since..... since... you.... This is just what's better for..."

"Y/N, you do still want to get married don't you?" He interrupted. The strain in his voice was evident from both use and emotion.

"What kind of fucking question is that?" Now you were raging. The absolute audacity of him to even ask that. “Well it's non-rhetorical.” “Of course I still want to get married, you fucking moron!” You growled. "Then explain to me wh.." his voice cracked out and he breathed harshly through his nose. “That!” You gestured to him. “That is why!” "So it hurts a little, it's fine. For fucks sakes, I'm fine," his voice was entirely strained from arguing, his chords stretch to their limit. “No, you’re not.” You shook your head before you took a deep breath and pinched your nose. “Paul, I want our wedding to be a day we both look back on in years, decades even, to come and still love every minute of it...” "And we will!" “Right, okay, so your voice fails during our vows or your speech and you’re gonna be okay with that, huh?” You put your hands to your hips and waited for his reply. "No. I mean, I don't know." "My point exactly." You flung a hand up in his direction. “But it’s another eight weeks off, plenty of time, I might be fine.” He shrugged you off like he could make it happen. You knew it wasn't possible. It had only been a week since he'd said your sweet nickname as clear as day and while more and more words were stronger and phrases longer and more clear, you knew him better than that and you knew he wasn't ready no matter how much he wanted to pissingly argue with you that the two of you could move forward as if his shooting were nothing.

"Might. Key word." You sighed, clearly frustrated to the point of tears as they welled and stung your eyes. “Okay, fine.” His hands flew out to his side. “Have it your way, call the venue and cancel.” Gritting your teeth, you replied, “I don’t want to fucking cancel, Paul, I just want to move it!” “You know how long in advance we had to book that place, Y/N, it could be another year before they have an opening again.” “Then we wait another year!” You sighed dramatically, “in the grand scheme of things what does it matter? Today, tomorrow, twelve months, it all amounts to the same thing.” "It matters to me, Y/N." “Okay... fine. Let’s keep the date.” She shrugs. “Let’s just go for it and when you can’t speak and start to get frustrated we’ll write our vows on a pad of paper. Or, better still how about we learn sign language?” “You’re a sarcastic bitch.” “Yeah? And you’re a stubborn asshole.”

There was a long, angry pause between the two of you, harsh jabs and insults now floating painfully in the air. The two of you glared at one another. Both of you furrowing your brows and chewing on the insides of your mouths. Then, you sighed, again with a harsh tone. "God damned it, I hate this. I hate that we’re even having to have this conversation but we are. You were shot! You were moments from death and-“ "And now it's my fault?" He shrieked at a higher pitch than his voice typically was. “Oh for the love of- I didn’t say that!” You balled your hands into fists, your body visibly shaking. “So what are you saying?” “I’m saying that given everything that’s happened, pushing the second biggest day of my life back is the least of my fucking concerns, Paul.” Now you were tearfully arguing, your eyes red as was the tip of your nose. You blinked hard to attempt to show your strength, not wanting to back down. “Second biggest?” “Yes, the second. Because when you...I mean the...” you swallowed back the sob that threatened to scream from you, so you choked in it. “The first was when they told me you were going to live.”

At your words, Paul blinked a little, his mouth opening before it snapped shut again and you shook your head, continuing to talk. “I know you’re hurting and struggling with all of this and it isn’t what you want but it hasn’t been easy for me, either.” You sniffed, the tears now falling from your eyes. “I might not have been the one that took a bullet to the neck but I had to sit there and watch you, barely able to live but fight so hard to stay and all I could think about was the fact I might have to live without you and for that reason alone I’d have changed places with you in a fucking heartbeat.” Your face scrunched up with heavy emotion that you'd held onto for weeks.

“Y/N....” he tried to take a step toward you, but the damage was done for the night. You were done. “Seeing you there, in that bed, wondering if you were gonna make it or not, it was the worse time of my life. So, yeah, frankly I don’t care when we say I do, but it can't happen the way we want it to right now. You’re alive. That’s enough for me. And right now, well it should be for you too.”

You turned on your heel and quickly left the living room. You slammed the bedroom door shut and leaned your back against it whilst you allowed your exterior to fully collapse. You buried your face in your hands as you sobbed. This wasn't what you wanted, you'd expected a better reaction from him as you'd hoped he'd have seen things the same way as you, but you were wrong.

Now, all that was left was to go to bed. You had no fight left, no drive and right now, you didn't want to make up.

Eventually, you crawled into bed and moved no further. Sleep weighing on you heavily.

****

When he'd watched her go, Paul was floored. The things she'd said to him had gone unspoken since he'd been home from the hospital. He knew it had been hard on her, the both of them, what he'd gone through but he'd never imagined how she'd have felt given she was always such a strong woman and that was one of the things he adored most about her.

In frustration, he rubbed his hands over his face and decided he needed a walk. He walked around the neighborhood and back, taking in the cool air, realizing the fall weather was upon them. Shit, fall, the holidays were creeping up on them and he'd hadn't even given it a thought.

It didn't matter, what mattered was the incessant need to push their wedding back another year, was his best guess, and that killed him. It wrecked him and he found himself getting angry all over again. He wanted to marry her now, drag her down to the Justice of the Peace and take her as his bride the minute the courthouse opened. So now, why, all of a sudden did she not want to do even so much as that. Was it cold feet? Was it him? What had happened to him? Was she ashamed of him being unable to speak? She said it was nothing of the sort but it didn't stop the thoughts from weighing on him.

When he got back to their apartment, he found Y/N fast asleep in their bed, her back to his side of the bed. He hated that they were going to bed like this. He didn't believe in it, and if he was honest with himself, this was the first time this had ever happened in the span of their relationship. He was a firm believer in his parents golden rule, never go to bed angry and always kiss each other goodnight. Tonight he didn't get to do either.

With a sigh, he pulled off his T-shirt and tossed it in the direction of the hamper in the corner of the room but it didn’t quite make it. Instead, it dropped about a foot or so away, ironically right on the spot where he’d dropped to one knee that November evening almost three years ago…

She'd stood in the bathroom across the hall getting ready for their dinner date, listening to him chatter on in their bedroom about whatever it was as he dressed for the night. It was mid-week and they'd both managed to be off in time for a dinner date. Paul had wanted to make it fancy, something special.

"Do you know what today is?" He asked as he tied his tie in the mirror that stood in the corner of their room.

"Er, Wednesday," she replied, loud enough for her voice to carry.

"Of course, but try again," there was a hint of humor to his voice, sarcasm at best.

"Date night," she giggled.

"Nope." He breathed out a nervous, shaky breath. A full two strides and he stood in front of their chest of drawers, pulling open his sock drawer, reaching for the small box in the back.

"I give up."

He chuckled anxiously and closed the drawer. "Our anniversary." He took a knee, opening up the small box and waited.

"What? No, that's not for a few more months," she said with a smile as she walked across the hall and into the doorway of their room. Her hands were at her ear, adjusting her earring.

She gasped seeing him on one knee, his eyes smiling but his hands shaking as he held out the ring box. The lid open to show her what he was asking.

"Also true, but no. At exactly this minute, twenty-one months ago," he checked his watch, "I responded to a call for backup and my life changed forever. I met this woman who I just couldn't let go and that same woman took her time in giving me a chance. But I knew from the moment she kissed me that nothing would ever be the same. I fell in love that night, and I knew I wanted to make her mine, to keep on loving her forever. That is, if you'll have me forever?"

He watched as her eyes began to pool with tears as her own shaky hands covered her mouth as he spoke, a nervous silence crossing the room as she seemingly processed everything he'd said.

Tearfully, she replied, "yes, absolutely, yes!"

Tears welled up in his beautiful blue eyes as he stood, and pulled the ring from its box, slipping it on with jittery fingers over the knuckles of her ring finger before he crashed his lips into hers for a deep, happy kiss. "I love you so much, Sugar."

With their foreheads pressed sweetly together, they both cried a little.

"Tell me about it, Stud." She smiled.

They were late to dinner that night, both of them showing up glowing. But his surprises hadn't ended there, no. He'd had both their parents waiting on them for their eight o'clock dinner reservations to celebrate their new good fortune. It was a night he'd never forget, not ever.

Paul glanced down at the ring on his girl’s finger as she slept. Her left hand just close enough to her face so it wasn't obscured as she still lay with her back to him while her right lay tucked up under her pillow. The five raw cut diamonds were set in white gold, a center stone with two diamonds on each side. The center cut wasn't gargantuan and it didn't need to be. She knew how hard he'd worked to buy her the simple design with the small stones it held.

He'd wanted to upgrade it the month he'd solved his first case as a detective but she'd denied him, explaining that it didn't matter how big or fancy it was, the first one was special because of all the thought and effort he'd put forth to even consider her as his wife.

With a sigh he bowed his head and turned to go wash up, before he climbed into bed, Y/N’s back still facing him and he lay awake, looking at the ceiling until finally, an hour or so later, sleep finally took him.

**** The next morning your alarm went off for the first time in weeks. With a groan you hit the button to silence it and cracked open a sore, tear swollen eye, it was still dark outside. You rose, heading on auto-pilot to the bathroom and showered quickly before you wrapped in a robe and headed in to make yourself some breakfast. Just as you were finishing up, Paul walked into the kitchen and you stood up and left the room, not speaking a word to him, you had nothing else to say.

Unfortunately, your bad mood soured what should have been a happy return to work, a sign that your life was getting back to some form of normalcy. Instead, you were off your game, and it didn’t go unnoticed.

"Yo, Panny, you come to work or just fucking off?" Rodriguez hollered from behind you as an entire clip of used bullets lay at your feet, still hot from firing. You slammed your hand against the button that brought your target to you, all but four shots missing the target. "Fuck off, Ro." "Y/L/N!" Captain Rogers shouted from the doorway. "Outside, now." With a grumble, you rolled your eyes and holstered your weapon, but not before changing out the empty clip for a new one. The tone of his voice was not comforting. "You got your ass handed to you on the mats in hand to hand, you couldn't even shoot a decent hand at sniper poker, and now my ace shot, a skilled and decorated marksman, can't sink a suspect in range." Your tongue poked the inside of your cheek as you drew a deep breath. “Sorry Cap, must be a little rusty.” He sighed and shook his head as it dropped disappointingly to his chest. "You're not ready, go home Y/N." "Steve...." "I pushed you too far. Go home, chill the fuck out, take the weekend." You groaned, “I don’t wanna go home.” The petulance evident both in your tone and body language as you folded your arms across your chest. “I'm fine. It's just a rough start." "Go the fuck home, Y/N. Or I'll send the Mrs. after you." You couldn't stand his wife and given your relationship with Steve, it was a credible threat. Karen Rogers was as green as Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West. "I'd call you an asshole but you're my sup so...." "Now, Y/N." “Fine.” You shrugged. “I’ll go back home. Wonderful.” "I didn't miss the sarcasm," Steve called out to your back.

You flipped him the bird as you kept walking.

**** Paul slammed the door to his mom and dad’s house, storming into the kitchen. It had been a shitty morning, with Y/N not speaking to him and then that damned fucking speech and physical therapy he had to endure twice a damned week.

“Who pissed in your cornflakes?” Big Jim looked at him, frowning a little. Paul ignored him and headed straight to the fridge, pulling out a soda.

“Paul, honey, what’s got into you?” Dot asked gently and he sighed, turning to face both his parents who were sat at the bar top, the remnants of a brunch on their plates in front of them. “Y/n wants to postpone the wedding.”

“Ah.” His dad leaned back in his chair. “And let me guess, you don’t?”

“Fuck, no.”

“Language.” His mother chastised and Paul rolled his eyes, as he paced slightly across the kitchen.

“And, you clearly discussed this in your usual, calm and rational manner?” His dad arched an eyebrow. Paul paused for a moment to eye his dad, before he resumed his movements.

With a sigh his mom spoke. “Paul, sit down for a second, quit pacing my kitchen floor.”

“I don’t want to sit down.” He shot back, petulantly.

“Paul Christopher Diskant, you sit your grown butt down, now.” His mother’s tone was sharp and with a groan he pulled a seat out from the breakfast bar, opposite his parents, and flopped down.

“Now, out with it, from the beginning.” His mother instructed and Paul let out another growl of frustration.

“I just told you. She wants to postpone the wedding. I don’t. There’s nothing else to tell you.”

“Don’t sass me!”

“I’m not sassing you, you’re just not fucking listening.”

“Hey, cut the shit. Don't talk to your mother like that.” Big Jim pointed at him, his voice stern. “You might be a grown man but I'll still kick your ass into next week, you little shit.”

Paul took a deep breath, his head hanging slightly. “Sorry Mom. It's been a really crappy couple of days.” At that he snorted. “Crappy couple of weeks one way or another.”

“Oh, Paul. I know it's not been easy.” Dot gave him a gentle smile. “But you're here with us and that's really all we care about.”

“I just feel like Y/N is getting cold feet. And that really sucks.”

“Don't be a dick.” Dot scoffed at his admission of feelings. “That girl has stood by you while you knocked on death's door.” “Mom, did you just call me a dick?” Paul looked at her, his brow raised and she nodded.

“Yes.”

“She’s not wrong.” His dad interjected.

“What is this gang up on Paul day?”

“You’re acting like a spoiled child who just had his best toy taken away.” Big Jim looked at him. “Son, she wants to postpone, not cancel!”

“Well it didn't feel that way last night or this morning. She stormed out for her first day back at work all pissed off I wasn't agreeing with her.”

“And I refer back to my previous observation. Maybe you should have attempted to discuss the issue in a calm and rational manner as opposed to shouting and getting all pissy.” Big Jim observed.

"I’m not pissy, I’m just... look, we've waited twice as long as we wanted to because she loved the venue so much, hell, I loved the venue. That place means a lot to us and it's so perfect. Everything has been perfect until now." He sighed, his voice again weak.

"What was her reasoning?" Dot pressed.

"Me." He said sadly, frustration clearly featured on his face.

"Paul, I highly doubt it's just you."

"She doesn't think I'm ready. Healthy enough. Healed enough. There's till eight weeks, Mom. Eight weeks, I can be so much better by then."

Dot reached across the granite for his hand. He took it, and held tight, like a boy needing his mother.

"My sweet, love sick boy," she softly smirked at him and he rolled his eyes .”Y/N is only thinking about you. She knows how frustrated you get when you struggle to talk and how would you feel if that happened during the vows or speeches? Look, Sweetheart, you’ve waited years for this, what’s another couple of months?”

“Mom, it won’t be a couple of months, there’s no way that place won’t be booked up for at least another year. I just... Is it so bad that I want to marry her right now as we planned?" His voice breaking and cracking. Too much talking.

“No, Son, it's not.” Jim cut in. “But listen to yourself, your struggling to talk now after this conversation. Y/N just wants to have the wedding you both have dreamed of, and spent so much time planning. Don't take that from her or yourself. You'll look back and think, I should have waited, when I was at full strength.”

Diskant looked at his father before he sighed and his shoulders sagged a little. “Seems like I’m out voted.”

"Not out voted, just...." Big Jim couldn't come up with a reasonable example.

But Dot interrupted, "We just think you need to think about this a little more and be open to what's going on."

"Open to what? The fact I’m now not gonna get married for another year coz some asshole shot me in the neck?"

"Paul..."

He shrugged, "Whatever. Guess, I have some rearranging to do."

Automatically, he looked down at his phone and saw that Tom Ludlow was calling. If there were any better time to get off this hamster wheel of an argument it were now. "I gotta take this."

He stepped outside and took his call. An hour later, he was meeting Ludlow at their apartment, fresh bottles of beer in the fridge and two on the coffee table between them.

Ludlow filled him in on exactly what happened after he'd left the scene and Paul behind. He talked about how Biggs was using Ludlow to get to Wander, how Tom had killed his entire unit out of self-defence and in turn discovered all the corrupt shit Captain Wander had on Tom, the unit, multiple officers, judges, councilmen and other local politicians and prominent community leaders. He told Diskant about the stolen money, hidden in the walls of Wander's home and he explained how important Biggs seemed to think Tom was for IA and the department.

It didn't surprise Diskant in the slightest that Ludlow's department was dirty. In fact, he'd half expected it and the realization hit moments before he was shot. The rest of Tom's story however was just insane, insane enough that he joked a movie could be made about it.

That said, Paul trusted Ludlow from the start. And he’d clearly been right about the guy, even if helping him had resulted in him being moments from death. Painful memories aside, it was nice to see him too. They’d been through a lot, but Paul wasn’t dumb enough to figure this was a purely social call. He knew Ludlow felt guilty about what had gone down and that was partly the reason for his visit. But it was misplaced guilt, one Disco was happy to absolve him of.

"Listen, Paul, with what happened, I..."

"Hey, it's okay. Shit happens. I'm alive. I knew what I was getting into, the risks involved. You gave me an out and I didn't take it." His voice rasped a little.

"Felt like I took a kid to a gun fight." Tom sighed, tossed back some of his beer and shook his head with a slight shrug. "But you're one helluva kid. A fucking fighter. You're a good cop, even better detective and I'm sorry I pushed you so far."

“No hard feelings, man.” Disco took a slug of his beer and shook his head as Ludlow made to speak. “I mean it. I knew what I was signing up for the second the call came in. Our jobs are shady as fuck and twice as dangerous.”

“You can say that again.” Ludlow sighed. “Still, what happened was rough, I’m glad you’re through it.”

Disco gave him a smile as they clinked bottles and Ludlow’s eyes scanned the small living room, stopping on the photo on the small shelf above the television. Paul glanced at it, looking at his and Y/N’s smiling faces as they stood in his parent’s back yard, both dressed in casual jeans and t-shirts, taken a few months before he’d been shot. A time when everything had been simpler and his life on track.

“How's the Missus?” Ludlow asked and Paul took a deep breath.

"She's, uh, she's good,” he answered, deciding not to burden Ludlow with details of their argument, “first day back today, getting her ass kicked I'm sure. Rogers told her it was training day."

"That's rough. Rogers is a hard ass.” Ludlow mused before his eyes flicked down to the beer bottle in his hand. “She er, she due back any time soon?"

Paul shrugged, “I wouldn’t expect so. Why you ask?”

“Because I don’t intend to be here when she returns.” Ludlow replied. “She wasn’t very happy to see me last time.”

At that, Paul frowned. “Last time?”

“Did no one tell you I came by the hospital?”

“Well, yeah they mentioned it but-“

“Well your girl packs a mean right hook.” Ludlow ran a hand over his jaw, almost as if he was recalling the punch he was talking about.

“Wait, what? She hit you?” Paul leaned forward, deeply concerned and slightly proud.

Tom nodded, "then said that if you died, I was next."

“Dammed, she’s vicious.” Paul couldn’t help the smirk which flicked onto his face at the thought of his girl landing one on the man sat next on the small armchair opposite him.

But the grin soon faded as it sunk in just how downright upset and distraught she must have been to do that. For all his jokes about her being a hard ass, she wasn’t one to throw punches around for no reason, in fact, given her job, she often did everything she could to avoid altercations in any shape, stating she saw enough of it at work without seeing it in her personal life too.

"Yeah, she is and frightening. But she's got good intentions. I don't fault her. I'd have popped me one too." Ludlow shrugged.

Paul took a deep breath as he pondered what Ludlow had said. His girl had that stupid nickname “Panny” for a reason, nothing much phased her. So for her to be rattled enough to sock Ludlow in the face just goes to show exactly how distraught she had been.

None of that was news to Paul, he knew all of this, and it had been pointed out to him again earlier that day by his parents. And then, in a moment of clarity, he realised that he might be being slightly unreasonable. Whilst logically, a compromise would be to perhaps cancel their current venue and forgo the huge day they had planned and book something smaller and less flashy for a few months down the line, Paul understood that she wanted this to be the best day it could possibly be for both of them. They had fallen in love with the Shutters on the Beach from the start, and had booked it with enough time to save for their dream day, even though they could have done something smaller and been married by now.

But that was a decision they had taken together, and hadn’t taken lightly, understanding that it would mean a long wait until they said “I do”, but that wait would be worth it. So, in the grand scheme of things, whilst he might not completely agree, she was right. Another year or however long made fuck all difference, even if he didn’t necessarily want to postpone, he understood.

And damned, now he felt like a right jerk.

*****

You pulled up to the curb to your duplex and frowned as an unfamiliar black car was parked outside, one you couldn’t recall seeing before. Taking a deep breath, you closed your eyes, resting your head back against the seat as you gave yourself a moment, trying to rid yourself of the frustration of the day.

Rogers was right, you weren't ready to come back. Not yet. Or at least not after the argument you’d had. It frustrated you entirely that this one small thing had spiralled so much as to affect your job. Never, since you'd joined the force, not even since you'd been on S.W.A.T., had you been sent home for misconduct of your behavior. That angered and frustrated you more. And right now, that frustration was leveled firmly at Paul.

You knew he was angry and upset, but so were you. You were thinking logically, wanting your wedding day to be as perfect as it could be for you both, but Paul was blinded by emotion. You understood. Of course you did, it wasn’t like you wanted to postpone, hell you wanted nothing more than to become his wife but it wasn’t worth rushing if it meant that when the time came you could both make those declarations to one another without either of you worrying his voice would give out.

And it irritated you that he couldn’t see that.

Growling out loud and slamming your palms against the wheel, you shook your head. That was when you saw him, you saw the one person you unadmittedly blamed for your mood, your position and your current situation.

"What the... That mother fu..." you stopped yourself, downright pissed at seeing Tom Ludlow leaving your residence.

You waited until Ludlow pulled away before exiting your car, slinging your 'go bag' over your shoulder from the back seat. You didn't miss your fiancé tossing what appeared to be bottles into the recycling bin at the side of the duplex.

He saw you and smiled, but you did nothing to acknowledge his gesture, allowing the screen door to slam behind you.

“Babe?” Paul’s voice called after you as he followed you in. “Sugar, look, I’m sorry-“

“What the fuck was he doing here?” You dropped your bag to the floor of the small hallway and wheeled round to face him.

"What?"

“Don’t play dumb with me! Ludlow, why was he here?” Paul sighed, "He called me while I was at my parents, wanted to come by. We talked for a bit, had a couple of beers and clearly you saw him just leave." There was a pause between you. "Which by the way I heard all about how you decked him in the hospital lobby." "The fucker deserved it. He's lucky you pulled through or I would have killed him. It would have been a clean shot too, non-traceable round. I'm not a marksman for nothing." Paul rolled his eyes, “you’re being ridiculous, this-“ he gestured to his scar, “- was not his fault.” "It was and you know it was. This is all because he didn't think you could do your job on your own." “Bullshit Y/N!” Paul shot back. "He gave me an out and I said no. He told me to go home, but I told him I knew what I was doing." You could see him flush with anger and, at his surprising admission, you were shaking in it. "He what?" "You heard me." "You fucking asshole. You stupid, stupid son of a..." you couldn't bring yourself to talk about Dot like that so you carried on, your anger raging as you railed into him. “How dare you throw that at me? You had every fucking chance to come home and let him take the fuck up on his own and you still went. You still stepped right into the fucking madness when, Tom fucking Ludlow of all the people in the entire fucking department, gave you a chance to come back to me?"

“Stop it Y/N! You know as well as I do, you don't take up the badge and go 'you know what, I might die today, imma sit this one out'!”

He had you there, he wasn't wrong. You literally growled at him, your chest rumbling. Paul sighed, and swallowed, looking down at the floor before he raised his head and licked his lips as he glanced over your shoulder for a moment before meeting your eyes.

“Listen, about the wedding-“

You groaned, “I can’t do this now.”

“Just listen to me, will you?”

“Why? So you can tell me again how you don’t want to change our wedding date? Because of your pride and..."

At that something flashed in his eyes and he took a sharp inhale through his nose.

"My pride?” His voice his voice strained harshly, "Okay, how about we discuss why you do want to change the date because you’re embarrassed. You're embarrassed of me."

His comment floored you momentarily and you frowned. “Is that what you really think? That I’m ashamed of you?”

"Feels like it."

"Pull your God damn head outta your ass, Paul."

“The only person round here with anything up their ass is you, a big fucking stick about Tom Ludlow paying me a visit.” He croaked back. “What, you want me to be sat at home, helpless, waiting for you to come back? Does that fit with the narrative of why you wanna call the wedding off? Poor Paul, he can’t manage much at the moment so-“

“Fuck you!” You screamed back. “Fucking fuck you!”

Your chest heaved, your nostrils flared. You. Were. Done. You moved to leave, but as you made towards the door, his arm shot out and his hand wrapped around your upper arm.

“Where are you going?”

“Anywhere you’re not!” You spat, wrenching your arm from his grasp.

He grabbed you again, this time by the waist and pinned you to the near-by wall. It wasn't painful or abusive, it was just enough roughness to keep your attention.

“Get off me.” You hissed, attempting once more to rid yourself from his grip.

“Fucking calm down!” He instructed, his hands pinned yours to the wall, his chest lifting away from your body. It reminded you of how he'd treat a suspect, enough force to maintain control but not to hurt.

His words were said through clenched teeth, his own hot breath from his nose flicking your hair a touch, he was so close. His blue eyes, full of fire, blazed into yours as the two of you stood still, chests heaving from the exertion of the shouting and anger.

He was the one to break first as he slammed his lips into yours. It stole your breath as he kept you pinned against the wall.

Eventually he pulled back and you glared at him. “Prick.”

“Shut the fuck up.” He hissed again, his voice breaking before his lips crashed back to yours. His hips ground into yours, keeping you pinned to the wall and it didn’t escape your notice that he was hard. The fucker was turned on.

But, in all honesty, no matter how pathetic it was, his display of dominance had you fluttering slightly but you were damned if you we’re going to show him that.

You felt him release your arms as his hands quickly moved to your work cargos. Your utility belt and flies were no match for his swift movements and you felt the release of their hold on you as the material flew open.

His chest and kiss kept you pinned to the wall as he undid the zipper to his denim and you quickly felt the head of his cock slip between your folds. “Seriously?” You whispered, making no attempt to stop him. “You think a fuck is gonna sort this out?”

He rutted up into you, stuffing himself right inside and jolting your body up the textured paint. The burn and stretch took your breath away, you weren’t as prepared as usual but it wasn’t uncomfortable.

"I said shut up." He growled as your arms swooped around his neck, trying to find purchase to grab and your fingers found the collar of his shirt. You gave a tug, no doubt stretching the collar but you didn't care. He thrust upward and used his hips to keep you in place as he leaned back enough to slip his shirt off, his built chest and less defined abs now on display, that necklace bouncing off his chest from the speed of his disrobing.

His eyes still blazed as you caught them in your own gaze. He looked down right feral, his skin flushed with anger. His hands flew to the hem of your navy uniform tee and in a wrench he had that over your head, his lips dropping to your collar bone and he nipped along the line, stinging bites that would no doubt leave their marks.

“Not so fucking mouthy now, are you Sugar?”

Your only reply was the 'fuck' that escaped your lips at a whimper as he spoke. The rasp of his injury mixed with the deep tone lust did to him had you fluttering in all the right places.

You weren't sure how he'd done it but your boots were unlaced and falling to the floor at his feet with a thud. You barely registered the way his fingers slipped under the hem at the leg of your cargos and slipped your socks away. He was rutting into you with such hard measure, his tongue aggressively and passionately dancing with your own. You felt a rawness against your back from the wall. He stopped kissing and fucking you long enough to tear down your pants and panties the rest of the way, leaving you in your sports bra, your nipples rock hard poking into the material. All whilst his body still pressed hard against you.

With a yelp, he lifted you and carried you the few short steps to the couch, dropping you on your ass and turning you to your knees. You caught just a glimpse of how he looked, chest naked and heaving, tattoos glistening with sweat, that look still raging in his eyes. You wagered you looked about the same because he looked how you felt. His cock glistened with your slick as he slipped right behind you, a knee on the cushion of the couch, the other boot planted into the carpet.

Without a word his hands grabbed your hips, unceremoniously repositioning you before he slammed straight back inside, jolting you forward a little as you cried out, your hands curling round the arm of the sofa, elbows locking to prevent you from falling face first into the cushions.

The angle change along your swollen walls filled you with a deep, rough pleasure and you groaned loudly as his hips rotated in a dirty grind as he bottomed out on one of his thrusts.

"Oh my... fuck..." you stuttered and behind you Paul gave a moan of his own.

“That all you got to say?” He panted, his voice cracking slightly, punctuated by his pants.

“Asshole.” You managed to whisper and with that, Paul grabbed that ponytail you sported and held tight, arching you head back towards him.

“Jesus Christ you just can’t stop can you?” His lips crashed to yours in a sloppy, filthy, tongue filled kiss before splaying his chest over your back, his hot breath against your ear as he made the most pleasurable grunts and moans, his hips pounding back and forth in a relentless rhythm.

He was close, you could feel it in the subtle rhythm change of his hips, his hand on your hip squeezing your skin, bruising it no doubt later.

"Do. It." You punctuated.

“Oh, baby girl , you should know by now,” he growled as his right hand moved from your hip, slipping around your belly and down between your legs, “not. before. you.” In no time at all his fingers had teased you to relief, your back arched as you cried out loudly, the heat and surge of your orgasm washing over you, the world spinning as you crashed over the edge.

He growled your name as he came, filling you but not stopping his relentless thrusts as if he couldn't help the automated way his body had taken over, taken you. You felt how warm your insides were at his spend, no doubt absorbing most of it. You fell forward onto the couch, his body lightly crushing you into the cushions.

As the two of you worked at recovering, his lips brushed over your skin in super soft kisses; along your shoulder, the back of your neck.

The only sound in the room were the two of you breathing heavily, a stark contrast to the screaming match you shared for the last two days. Then you felt his weight shift and a sweet kiss to the back of your neck.

"About the wedding...."

You groaned, after everything you just threw at each other and the most ridiculously, satisfying angry sex you had ever had, he wanted to start back up again. "Please don't. I don't want to argue."

He hushed you and your walls squeezed against him. He let out a low chuckle mixed with a moan. "I’m not." He kissed your shoulder. "Before you came in before like a buck shot grizzly bear, I was gonna say you were right."

You stilled and turned your head to look at Him. “I’m sorry, say that again?” You teased

He smiled and nipped at your neck, "don't be a dick."

He pulled out of you and sat down on the sofa. Your body was jello but you couldn't miss the chance to seize an opportunity to slip him back inside you and simply sit on his lap. He gave a grunt as you kissed him, soft at first, then lolled your tongue over his lips. "I'm sorry too."

“I never said I was sorry.” He playfully chuckled and this time you nipped at him, teeth grazing his jaw.

“Don’t be a dick.”

His hands moved to your hips and then up your back, pulling you against his tacky damp chest.

“Disco?”

“Sugar?”

“You don’t really think I’m ashamed of you, do you?”

"It'd crossed my mind."

"Look at me," you sat up and held his jaw in your palms. "Never, in my entire life will I ever be ashamed of you. You are the absolute strongest, bravest person I know."

"Okay."

You kissed those sweet little moles on his right cheek by his nose and just below his bottom lashes. "I love you like no other, Paul Diskant."

His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed and that gorgeous soft smile spread across his lips. Then you wrapped your arms around his neck and placed a kiss where you knew he'd feel and understand what you meant, what you felt. It was covered by a still healing scar, but he felt everything.

“I only want us to have the day we want, the day we deserve.” You whispered, sniffing a little as you blinked back tears.

"I'll call Shutters tomorrow. See what they can do." He whispered into your hair as he kissed your head.

“Thank you.” You lay your head on back his shoulder, his arms holding you close.

***** Part 6.1

#rock n roll people in a disco world #paul diskant #paul diskant x reader #paul diskant x you #reader insert #paul diskant fan fiction #street kings #chris evans #chris evans characters

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azucanela · 4 years

Note

OMG I AM OBSESSED WITH YOUR WRITING YOU ARE DEFINITELY ONE OF THE BEST WRITERS ON TUMBLR NO CAP!!! i love ur zuko fics, and i wanted to request some sokka x reader!!! i want u to have complete creative freedom but i love how you write slowburn omg so some enemies to friends to lovers sokka content would be insaneeee! maybe reader is fire nation (zuko’s cousin/iroh’s daughter??) but joins the gaang after crossroads or something?

AFTER | SOKKA X READER

SUMMARY: Sokka didn’t expect the girl who held a knife to his neck to be the same girl he’d fall for. Y/N didn’t really expect to fall either.

WORD COUNT: 10k

WARNINGS: injuries, implications of death, kisses, bloodbending, threats of bodily harm, death threats

A/N: time to give sokka the attention and hype he is OWED, also im SO SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONGGG but this is quite possibly my favorite Y/N. writing for sokka is hard tho. im not sure how much i like this tbh but its really long omg. also thank you!!!! i feel honored to be considered the best :D you are too kind

When she was younger, Y/N joined Azula’s little troupe of girls. Though she wasn’t some loyal little soldier for her to order around, no, Y/N never feared Azula. Nor did she follow her blindly. No, it had always been a struggle for power between the two. Even when her father was booted from the throne as the rightful heir.

Losing her brother made her wonder if giving up like her father had in Ba Sing Se was the easy way out. Perhaps thats why she promised herself she would never give up. Maybe thats why she challenged Azula to... an unofficial duel when she’d heard her comment. Challenged her and won.

The new Fire Lord’s pride and joy had lost against his niece, a shame.

Y/N hadn’t thought much of it, but it probably would’ve explained why Fire Lord Ozai was rather pleased when Y/N had came to him and explained her intents to go alongside her father and cousin in banishment. She was, no matter how unlikely, another potential heir to the throne. And unlike Zuko, an actual threat. Sending her on a journey to find someone who’d been missing for a century was the best way to get rid of her.

If Y/N was honest, she viewed the banishment as more of a vacation. All her life, she had to deal with banquets, politics, war tactics, all at such a young age. It was tiring, and dull, spending day and night in the palace doing such things. Now, she had the opportunity to travel the world, though her grumpy cousin was rushing them throughout each spot, it was still nice. Zuko certainly didn’t think so, given that they hadn’t found the Avatar yet, not that Y/N believed they ever would but, it is what it is.

A sigh escaped her as she sat, on leg propped up against the other on the deck of the ship, they had arrived in the Southern Water Tribe after seeing an odd light in the distance. Maybe it was cruel, but Y/N sincerely hoped they didn’t find the Avatar. She didn’t want her vacation to end, she didn’t want to return to the politics, and she didn’t want to deal with one of the most powerful people on the planet. Aside from her own desires, Y/N couldn’t help but disapprove of Zuko’s need to please his father, the man who’d hurt him beyond forgiveness.

She sincerely doubted her father approved either. Though their relationship had been strained for some time now. Y/N didn’t hate her father, she doubted that was possible, he was a kind man and a good father. Things between them simply felt... off. She liked to think she’d gotten over it, the initial jealously she felt when she discovered her father intended to join Zuko on his hunt for the Avatar.

When she’d found out from Fire Lord Ozai.

Sometimes she wondered if her father even intended to say goodbye. But she wasn’t a fool, Y/N knew he had recently lost a son, they were both hurting and Zuko needed someone who wasn’t going to hurt him if he did something wrong. Though, Y/N saw him try to save the lives of the soldiers of the so-called great Fire Nation, not do something wrong. Regardless, Zuko needed a father figure, yes. But Y/N needed a father as she grappled with the death of her brother.

Maybe she was just a little bitter about it.

“Are you coming?” Zuko asked, his words coming out harshly.

Raising a brow, Y/N shook her head, “no. Don’t get too violent, though.” She warned, looking at him pointedly, “they’re a small tribe that’s going extinct.”

Zuko rolled his eyes as he exclaimed, “that’s not my fault!”

Sitting up to face him, Y/N smacked him upside the head as she walked past him, “considering the royal family, which you are a part of need I remind you, ordered the genocide of every single Waterbender they had...” She paused, cracking her knuckles before turning to look back at Zuko, “I would say you that everyone here probably blames you for it by assosiation.” Y/N reasoned. She had never liked the history that her ancestors had, much less approved.

Taken aback, Zuko exclaimed, “you’re a part of the royal family too!” Y/N was well aware of the circumstances surrounding his banishment, he’d tried to save lives, but war was the only thing that mattered to the Fire Nation it appeared.

His attempt at defense simply earned him a shrug, “perhaps.” Y/N didn’t consider herself a member of the royal family, and she doubted her father did either. And no matter what Zuko thought, though he was royal by blood, his banishment severed his ties to the throne permanently.

Unless they happened to find the Avatar, though that wasn’t very likely, Y/N decided she would rethinking her life choices should the Avatar be here of all places, as she rested her forearms on the side of the ship and watched Zuko march down his soldiers.

She wasn’t going to tell him that the Southern Water Tribe didn’t have a military, much less benders. As previously mentioned, the genocide destroyed the benders, and the most of the soldiers in the village had headed off to fight in the war against the Fire Nation. Though her brow did raise as she watched him yank an old lady from the small crowd of people, Y/N straightened her back, preparing to get involved.

Of course, a young warrior ended up running at her cousin, war paint and all as he attempted to attack. Key word being attempted. Watching him fall face first into the snow, Y/N realized he wasn’t a warrior, but a boy. The Avatar also happened to be a boy. A very, very young boy. Not a century year old Airbender.

Y/N supposed it was time to start rethinking her life.

Sokka didn’t know what he was supposed to do as he helped Princess Yue onto the Sky Bison. They needed to find Aang’s physical body, quickly, otherwise he wouldn’t be returning to the real world, and they happened to be fresh out of Avatars up until recently so that wasn’t really an option. Not when they needed the balance of the world to be restored immediately.

Sighing, Sokka moved to get onto the Sky Bison, only to be yanked backwards, stumbling before having a knife pressed to his neck. “What the hell!” He exclaimed in shock, garnering the attention of the others that were already on Appa. Katara’s mouth gaping open at the sight of him as Princess Yue cried out in shock.

The knife against his neck is certainly uncomfortable, and he realizes that he probably should’ve stuck around Kyoshi Island long enough to learn how to get out a situation like this. “I’m coming with you. Someone has to make sure Zuko doesn’t do anything else dumb.” Comes a voice from behind him, and Sokka’s brows furrowed in confusion, who was this? And why were they trying to kill him? More importantly, how did they know Prince Zuko, the guy who had been chasing them since Aang had come out of that iceberg. Questions ran rampant through his mind, and he nearly forgot that his life was being threatened.

That was a luxury he couldn’t afford at the moment.

Though he couldn’t see the person behind him, he could see Katara grimace at her demand, anyone associated with Prince Zuko likely had a similar end goal, to capture the Avatar. This wasn’t something they could allow, and Sokka recognized this as Katara asked, “why should we trust you?” Katara’s eyes soon met Sokka’s and he knew that no matter what he said, she would give into the girl’s demands for his safety. Sokka mentally scolded himself for failing to prevent this situation.

The girl behind him scoffed, “unlike my dear cousin,” Sokka couldn’t help the shock that flooded him, cousin? As in Zuko is this girl’s cousin? Or did she mean someone else? He was kidding himself, there was no one else it could be. “I like banishment, it’s like a fun little vacation. I could care less about the Avatar.” The knife draws in closer to Sokka’s neck, nearly drawing blood, likely expressing the fact that she could care less if Katara believed her. Though Sokka doubted she didn’t care about the Avatar, he was one of the most important people in the world.

But Sokka would likely die if she didn’t agree, or at least end up fatally injured. No matter how far Katara had come with her Waterbending, she hadn’t perfected it yet, and healing was only so effective. Sokka sincerely doubted she could beat the speed of this girl and her weapon considering the fact that she’d gotten the jump on them the first time around. Death wasn’t something he wanted, but anyone who knew Zuko couldn’t be trusted, much less someone who shared his blood. If he turned out... like that, Sokka didn’t want to imagine how this stranger ended up.

“Don’t try anything.” Katara warned, eyeing the girl wearily. Though it was an empty threat for the most part, in the air, there was little Katara could do against a foe. Though three, well two if you exclude the princess, against one seemed like favorable odds, this girl seemed talented in combat, even without bending.

She released Sokka, and he turned to see her beaming up at Katara, “happy to be doing business with ya.” Turning to Sokka, she looked him up and down, sizing him up before speaking, “be a gentleman and help me up?” Yeah, she was crazy. The pretty ones are always crazy. That, and she was Zuko’s cousin, it made sense. Though Sokka was fairly sure that she was joking, you could never be too sure.

“Who even are you?!” He exclaimed, exasperated and preparing to whip out his boomerang as he glared at her. He didn’t recognize her, but she’d likely been traveling with Zuko for quite some time now if they were related.

She just shrugged, “you can call me Y/N.” She got onto Appa with ease, Katara on guard a she eyed her, eyes piercing into her soul, Y/N raised a brow upon noticing this, “calm down. I wouldn’t have killed him.”

Katara inhaled deeply, trying to maintain patience as Sokka got into the saddle, “yip, yip.”

Y/N wasn’t really shocked when it turned out Azula was after them. Of course good old Uncle Ozai sent his most valuable asset to bring them back. Though some good at come of it, Zuko cut his ponytail, something Y/N had taken pleasure in bullying him over. Now they were on the run, in the very city that her father had tried to run to the ground all those years ago.

Irony at its finest.

Tugging at the sleeves of her Earth Kingdom garments, Y/N sighed, walking through the streets of the city. She didn’t know where she was if she was honest, and standing in the beautiful plaza, Y/N wondered if maybe, it would be better if she never returned back to that horrid apartment. Her father was starting over, getting them all jobs at a tea shop, even Zuko had tried to move on, going out on a date with a girl.

The Earth Kingdom was an odd place, but here, no one knew who she was. It wouldn’t be difficult to restart, alone. Without the expectations she’d been raised with. Fists balling up, Y/N exhaled slowly, turning a corner. There wasn’t graffiti in this part of the city, she realized, staring at the walls. Though there was an odd poster, squinting at it, she moved closer. It was a poorly drawn image of-

A Sky Bison. The same one she’d ridden on back during the Siege of the North, not that any others existed, the Sky Bison were a dying breed. Which could only mean one thing, the Avatar was in Ba Sing Se.

"Have you seen him?” She heard from behind her. Y/N recognized the voice, it belonged to the boy she’d held at knife point, “the drawing isn’t my best but-”

Turning around she spoke rapidly, “don’t freak out.” This was a problem.

Y/N liked to think she was the least threatening of the Royal Family, aside from her father that is. Though they could both be lethal in their own ways, neither demonstrated the true extents of their power unless it was truly necessary. Maybe that’s why Y/N hoped that the boy, Sokka, she believed his name was, wouldn’t freak out.

Of course, he did. Dropping the posters in his hand, he opened his mouth, likely to scream, only for Y/N to practically tackle him. She slammed his body against the wall, covering his mouth with her hand as she glared at him. Sokka let out a grunt of surprise, immediately beginning to struggle in her hold, “calm down! I don’t have a knife this time around.” Y/N cried out, her voice a hushed whisper. Of course, what she said was a lie, she always had at least three weapons on her. Upon entering the city, she’d knocked that number down to only two weapons, much to her dismay and Iroh’s relief.

She felt him lick her hand, and she quickly removed her hand in disgust, while keeping the other planted on his shoulder, they both exclaimed, “what the hell!”

Sokka’s eyes narrowed at her, “look. I don’t wanna cause a scene, so I’m just gonna go-” He sighed when her hand remained on his shoulder, firmly holding him against the wall as he tried to move away only to be pushed back into the wall. “Or not.”

“Look, you cannot go back to your little group and tell them that I’m here.” Y/N tried to choose her words carefully, if she didn’t need to, she didn’t want to suggest that her father and Zuko were also in the city. “I’m trying to have a permanent vacation, away from the Fire Nation and my crazy family, in Ba Sing Se.” She explained, slowly removing her hand from his shoulder, “think you can respect that?”

He looked at her wearily, during their last interaction, she’d made no attempts to actually injure them. And when she had the Avatar right in front of her, unlike Zuko, she hadn’t tried to kidnap him. Y/N had been honest last time, and chances were, she was being honest now. That didn’t make him feel any better about trusting her though.

“How do I know you won’t follow me and kill me in my sleep?”

Y/N looked at him incredulously, “is that a joke?” She’d considered that too though, the possibility that he’d follow her back to her shared apartment and alert his friends of their location. Y/N refused to be the reason that they lost their new lives in Ba Sing Se, and had already decided to check into an inn for the night.

Raising a brow at her, Sokka gestured for her to give him an answer, and Y/N stared at him momentarily, “well. How do I know you won’t kill me in my sleep?” Y/N retorted.

Sokka rolled his eyes at her, “I’m a good person.” Came his response.

“Debatable.”

Sokka stared at her in disbelief, “I’m trying to save the world here!” He exclaimed, and Y/N wasn’t shocked by his response, her goal had been to fluster him and she had.

Tilting her head at him, Y/N replied, “sure.” Stretching her arms upwards, she waves to him, “don’t tell your friends I was here, and we’re good.” She began to walk further into the alley, towards the other side, “see you around.” If he was here, his friends were probably around the area as well, meaning she had to leave.

His mouth gaped open and he stared at her figure as she stalked off, pausing momentarily before groaning and running after her, ending up at her side. “What do you mean, sure?” Sokka asked, confusion laced in his tone.

Y/N raised a brow at him. “What are you doing?” She wanted to laugh at his reaction, though he was now following her liked a lovesick puppy, which could prove problematic.

Crossing his arms he responded, “making sure you don’t do anything bad.” Sokka eyed her suspiciously, “because I am a good person.” He asserted.

“And I’m a bad person?”

She already knew he was going to say, ‘yes, yes you are.’ After all, she was from the Fire Nation, and Y/N had no doubt she’d done terrible things in her life, especially when she’d fallen into a dark place and taken on... less than favorable coping mechanisms.

And he’s silent for a moment, leaving Y/N to wonder if he suddenly cares about the feelings of the enemy. Only for him to say, “in my experience... good people can do bad things.”

That wasn’t what she expected. Y/N found herself stunned, speechless as she looked to Sokka, though he simply continued to walk alongside her nonchalantly. Quickly collecting herself, she looks away from him and to the nearby food stand, “that didn’t answer my question.” And as Sokka opened his mouth to likely continue his statement, Y/N realized she didn’t want to know the answer as she spoke, “you want food? I want food. Let’s get food.”

Sighing, Sokka followed her, “as long as you don’t poison me.”

Y/N’s brows furrowed at his comment, looking back at him, “do you-” A small laugh escaped her, “do you think I just carry around poison?”

Sokka didn’t know why he swelled with pride when he made her laugh, “in case you run into your enemies, absolutely.” It was probably because she was the enemy, and it took real talent to make someone who hated you laugh.

“How often do you think I run into my enemies and invite them to get food with me?” She asked, picking up a few things from the stand, before heading over to pay.

Frowning, Sokka watches her pay, “I thought we were bonding over,” he paused to take a meat bun from her and shove it into her face dramatically, “meat! Yet, I’m still your enemy.”

Y/N simply shrugged, “this is a one time thing.”

It was not a one time thing.

Sokka found himself ‘coincidentally’ running into Y/N, more and more often. She’d be walking through the streets of the upper ring about once a week, though she had started walking through the streets of the inner ring of Ba Sing Se far more frequently than normal in recent weeks. He’d been meaning to ask her why, maybe she’d also grown accustomed to their meetings and started to come around more. During their meetups they’d talk, about things other than the war, which was a conversation difficult to come by with the others. Though he cared for his friends, talking to Y/N felt different, a good different. She wasn’t overbearing like Katara, or mean like Toph, but she also wasn’t as passive as Aang.

It was odd. Knowing someone who had once held a knife to your neck in a more friendly way. Though, if Sokka was honest, he didn’t trust her, and she likely didn’t trust him either. They’d both taken precautions due to the mistrust between them, not that be blamed her. At the end of the day, they were still on opposing sides, kind of. Y/N had never seemed to care about finding the Avatar, but she was certainly loyal to her family above all else.

She’d demonstrated that in the Northern Water Tribe.

Sokka was the same, if he had saw an inkling of betrayal as a possibility, he wouldn’t hesitate to tell the others. Their safety was his priority at the end of the day, and Y/N didn’t owe him anything, just like he didn’t owe her anything. Maybe that was the beauty of it all. But for now, everything remained peaceful, calming, and simple.

Of course, all good things must come to an end.

Katara had oddly disappeared after Aang arrived with news of his vision. And then, as though things couldn’t get any weirder, Iroh arrived, Y/N’s apparent Father Iroh. Toph seemed to know him well, which certainly came as a shock to Sokka and Aang. “I need your help, Prince Zuko has been captured.” He explained, opening his mouth to continue only for Sokka to interrupt. He couldn’t help it when his brows furrowed in both confusion and frustration, Y/N had never suggested that the rest of her family was here.

“Are you crazy? You guys were trying to capture Aang not to long ago!” Sokka pointed out, throwing his arms outwards, “why not get Y/N to help?” She was certainly capable of raiding the palace and retrieving her cousin.

At this comment, Iroh’s face darkened, “we were separated in the palace. I’m unsure if they managed to capture her or if she escaped.” Oh. So that’s what he was going to say.

Sokka couldn’t help it when his face dropped, looking to Iroh he exclaimed, “well- why didn’t you lead with that!” Pushing past Aang who had been prepared to start giving a speech on why they should assist Iroh, only for his mouth to gape open as Sokka headed for the door.

“Why are you so eager?” Toph asked as they began to follow him out the door.

He faltered, quickly trying to think up a good excuse as he replied, “no reason.”

Toph’s frowned, “I can tell when you’re lying Sokka.” She reminded him.

“We can discuss this later!” He exclaimed, flustered. “Let’s go.”

Y/N had contemplated killing Zuko before.

It had never really been serious, as far as she would’ve gone was maybe injuring him badly enough that she got her point across. But at the end of the day, she protected Zuko to the best of her ability, and tried to keep his mind from being poisoned by the Fire Nation ideals that she’d once lived by unquestionably.

Now she actually wanted him dead. He stood alongside Azula, who had offered Y/N her spot in her little gang hours ago, though she’d rejected the offer much to Azula’s chagrin. But she seemed sure that Y/N would accept some time soon. Perhaps it was because Zuko had betrayed her father and left him to the Dai Li.

He had betrayed her father, the man who had practically raised both of them.

Y/N had a violent past, she wouldn’t deny, and she liked to think that she was past all that. But looking at the situation ahead of them, watching the Waterbender, Sokka’s sister, Katara, cry over the body of the Avatar, she realized that maybe violence was the answer. Just this once.

So, when she hopped in front of them, she had a plan. A violent one.

“Pull yourself together.” She snapped at Katara, who looked up at her, bloodshot eyes and tears streaming down her confused face, “he’s getting out of here alive. But first, I need you to soak them.” Y/N gestured towards the troops coming towards them, Zuko and Azula accompanying them. Katara opened her mouth, and Y/N didn’t care what she was going to say as she ordered, “now!”

Katara’s brows drew together as she released the Avatar’s head onto her lap, raising her hands to use the waterfall behind them to successfully drench the soldiers, who groaned at the discomfort but pausing temporarily before they continued towards them. “What did you think that would accomplish? What a pitiful-” Azula’s taunts were paused when she watched as Y/N drew her hands together, inhaling deeply, and Azula stopped her movement. “That’s not possible.”

Suddenly, lightning was between Y/N’s fingertips, and she extended her hand into the large puddle of water that Katara had created. Y/N had learnt to bend lightning soon after she’d mastered Firebending, from her father, he’d insisted that she only use it when necessary, so she kept her ability to herself. This was necessary, she decided, hand touching the water and sending a shock throughout everyone with it, successfully putting all of the soldiers out of commission.

Unfortunately, Azula recognized the signs of lightning bending, and withdrew alongside Zuko, and the two were now coming to attack from above at a rapid rate. Y/N whipped her head around to see Katara, mouth gaped open at all the fallen soldiers. “You two need to leave, I’ll hold them off.” She began to move to create another strike of lightning

“No.” Called out another voice, and Y/N whipped her head over to see it was her father, Dai Li agents likely nearby as he moved in front of Y/N. “You all need to leave. Take Y/N with you, she will help the Avatar reach his destiny.” Y/N wanted to laugh at that, how could he be so sure? If the boy did die, then this would all be for nothing

Y/N scoffed, “are you crazy?” She moved closer to her father, “unlike Zuko, I’m not leaving you.” She exclaimed, exasperated.

Iroh simply smiled at her as he said, “I’m proud of you, Y/N.”

Sokka knew he seemed dumb. He knew how others perceived him, as the ‘extra’ member of Team Avatar, the useless one, because he lacked bending. At the end of the day, Sokka was the brains of their operations, he was observant, and this helped him develop plans that most people would never even consider.

Not that anyone else knew, but Sokka was the only one that had actually interacted with Y/N prior to what happened in Ba Sing Se. Sure, they’d all met once or twice in the past, but Sokka had a knife to his throat then, so Y/N probably didn’t seem that appealing to the others. And he doubted they understood how odd it was that she was so... apathetic. Normally she’d tease, and joke alongside him but now?

It was odd, and nobody else could notice the shift in her personality but him, and he was concerned. Y/N had lost her father, and been betrayed by her cousin, and she had yet to talk about it, at all. Sokka liked to think that they were close enough to discuss such things, and he’d tried to get some sort of emotion out of her, the key word being tried.

Despite her apathetic personality, the others had warmed up to her for the most part. Apparently Toph had met Y/N in the past, during the time she’d run off and encountered Iroh. So, the two got acquainted fairly fast, Aang was happy to have a Firebender, and insisted that once he was back to full strength, and they’d found a better place for practice, he’d learn Firebending from her. Y/N had agreed but it was clear Aang wasn’t as excited as he was acting, Sokka figured he still associated the time he hurt Katara with Firebending.

Katara had been far less weary of Y/N than Sokka had expected, but given what Katara had told him when she’d first joined, that made sense. Y/N was a powerful Firebender who had betrayed her entire nation to help save Aang’s life, and though Katara didn’t approve of everything she’d done in the past, she tolerated her. Which was better than nothing in Sokka’s book.

They were currently camped out in the woods beside a Fire Nation town, everyone had scattered to prepare for the few nights they’d likely stay in the area. Katara had gone to the town with Toph and Aang, in search of supplies and food, while Sokka and Y/N set up the camp and collected wood to help start a fire. Y/N had insisted that she could maintain the fire without any wood, but Sokka viewed this as an excuse to get her alone and force her to discuss her feelings.

“So...” Sokka mumbled, looking to her as she leaned down to pick up another piece of wood, “lovely weather we’re having.”

Y/N turned to him, raising a brow before nodding, “yeah.” It was clear she wasn’t entirely paying attention the nonsense that was coming out of his mouth as he tried to get her to listen to him.

Sokka grabbed another piece of wood, “how have you been?”

Tilting her head at him in confusion, Y/N brought another piece of wood into her arms, “fine.” Looking up at the dimming sky she frowned, “we should start heading back to that spot we’d found earlier.” Y/N turned to begin walking, and Sokka struggled to match her pace.

His brows furrowed in frustration as he stared at her, the light of the falling sun filtering in between the trees and onto them. Y/N seemed to glow as she maneuvered between the trees, “how have you been sleeping?” Even Sokka sounded confused at the question he asked, but he didn’t know how to broach the topic with Y/N.

She simply paused her movement, turning to him, he stumbled slightly due to the abrupt stop, and met her eyes. “Just ask what you wanna ask, Sokka. Stop dancing around whatever it is.” Y/N sounded tired, looking to him expectantly as she awaited his question. Sokka scolded himself for being so obvious that she’d noticed something was up.

He sighed, “are you okay?” And she opened her mouth to respond but he continued, “actually? You can say that you are okay, and not mean it. Y/N you lost your dad and were betrayed by your cousin, and you-” Sokka grimaced as he met her eyes, “you haven’t been the same since you joined us.”

Y/N is silent for a moment, then her eyes were piercing into his, “how would you know that I haven’t been the same?” She asked, turning away to continue walking back to the chosen campsite, “it’s not like you know me.” His statement had set her off it appeared, but her response had easily done the same for him.

“Are you serious? Not like I know you?” He scoffed, jogging to catch up with her, “I know that you do whatever it takes to protect the people you care about. I know that you really like Earth Kingdom food because most of the food within the Fire Nation is on the spicier side.” Y/N didn’t seem to be listening, and the camp was in sight, but Sokka continued, “I know that you get really cold easily unless you regulate your body temperature with your Firebending. And I know that you can’t pick a favorite color because you are very indecisive.”

Aggressively, Y/N dropped the sticks into the center of the campsite as they arrived, turning to him, “you can stop now.” Her voice was almost taunting as she spoke, sarcastic in a way.

Sokka simply followed suit, placing the firewood in the center and facing her head on, “and most importantly, I know what it’s like to lose someone.” He takes her hand, and Y/N practically growls at the contact, attempting to yank her hand out of his grasp, she ends up pulling him closer towards her. Sokka clumsily topples onto her, knocking the both of them down into the dirt with a grunt. His forearms preventing him from crushing Y/N under his body weight as he held himself up, his eyes meet hers.

Y/N finds herself glaring daggers at him, while Sokka finishes his little speech with, “you don’t have to deal with this alone.”

And in that moment, he looks at her, really looks at her. And she’s really pretty.

Y/N opens her mouth to say something to him, only for someone else to begin speaking, “are we interrupting something?” Toph. Looking up, Sokka sees the others as well, Aang looks rather smug as he wiggles his eyebrows at Sokka, and Katara gives him a pointed look, likely disappointed that he’d fraternizing with the former enemy. He can’t help it when he feels his cheeks warm, and before he can move to get off Y/N, she’s launched him off of her, and he’s flat on his back on the ground. Toph laughs at the actions, bending a seat of earth for herself and the others before falling backwards into it, the girl seems to wish she had popcorn as she watched the moment unfold.

“No.” Y/N mumbles, bringing herself to her feet and dusting herself off. “I’ll be in my tent if you need me.” She retreats into one of the tents they’d set up earlier, and Sokka groans as he lets his head fall backwards into the ground and runs his hands over his face.

When he removes them, Aang is standing over him, along with Toph, while Katara organizes the firewood. “So... did we interrupt something?” Toph asked.

Sokka just sighs, his plan failed. This time at least. Next time, his goal would be to make her laugh, to make her smile. At least she had expressed some emotion, anger was better than nothing.

Anger seemed to turn to annoyance, since Y/N doesn’t leave her tent until nightfall and Sokka can’t help but wonder what was entertaining enough to keep her in there for all that time. When she does exit, she uses her Firebending to light a fire, and uses the firewood they’d collected earlier to ensure it stays alight. The rest of the group was seated around the center of the campsite, and Sokka wonders if she’s going to go back to her tent when she realizes the only open seat is next to him.

She doesn’t return to her tent though and he’s grateful. Though she sits as far as possible from him on the bench that Toph had created, half-heartedly listening to the things that the others are saying. Y/N can feel herself getting cold and can’t help the resent that bubbles up in her chest as she recalls what Sokka send earlier. Exhaling deeply, a puff of blue fire escapes her mouth and Y/N feels nauseous at the small reminder of Azula.

This catches Sokka’s attention, though the others are too enraptured in the story Aang was telling, Sokka turned to her, “cold?” He asked, leaning to the side to grab a blanket from his small pack, he offers it to her.

Y/N knew she wouldn’t be able to regulate her temperature when she fell asleep, but accepting the blanket from Sokka felt like... it felt like accepting him and everything he had said about her. So, when she doesn’t take the blanket from his hands, Sokka sighs, moving to put it back, only for Y/N to snatch the blanket from his hand and wrap it around herself begrudgingly.

This was her way of apologizing, moving closer to Sokka on the small bench she huffed as she pulled the blanket tighter around herself and turned her attention to Aang. She’d been mean, she wouldn’t deny, but what was she supposed to say? Exhaling deeply, Y/N closes her eyes temporarily, allowing drowsiness to consume her for a moment, before looking back to Aang.

It isn’t until Sokka feels a weight fall onto his shoulder midway through his own story that he realizes Y/N has fallen asleep, his mouth gaping open in shock as he pauses his words. He quickly shakes off the shock, cheeks warming as he turns back to the rest of the group, who all regard him curiously. Aang once again wiggles his eyebrows and Sokka ignores the action, continuing his story. Though he’s more weary of his vivid hand movements in fear of awakening Y/N, and noticeably quiets his voice. Sokka finds himself wishing he was Y/N as he listens to Katara’s Water Tribe horror story intently, after all, this is the most peaceful he’s ever seen her.

It doesn’t last long, because she’s soon startled awake, hand going to her side where she keeps her dagger as she and Toph speak simultaneously, “someone’s coming.”

As an old woman emerges from the shadows, Sokka practically holds Y/N down to keep her from lunging at her and attacking as the woman speaks. And of course, Y/N’s distaste for the woman doesn’t stop there, even when she invites them into her home, though Sokka doesn’t blame her. She’s a suspicious woman.

It’s not until he and Aang are attacking each other that Sokka regrets preventing Y/N from attacking the old woman when she had the chance. Katara is struggling to move, and Sokka can only hope that Toph and Y/N return from the cave soon as he yelps upon nearly making contact with Aang, the old woman laughing cynically. Sokka watches as she shifts, hand outstretching behind her, “don’t think I forgot you little Firebender.”

His eyes widen in both shock and fear as Y/N’s body is suddenly thrown onto the ground in front of him. Her body rising almost mechanically, back to a stand, Sokka realizes there’s lightning at her fingertips, the woman manipulating her body to aim for Sokka. “A shame you’ll be the woman to end your friend’s life isn’t it,” She’s making eye contact with Katara who is crying out and begging for her to stop.

Sokka can see the panic in Y/N’s eyes as the her hands aim towards him, “Y/N. It’s okay.” He calls out her, in an attempt at assurance that he doubts does much to soothe her. “It’s okay.” He repeats, squeezing his eyes shut as he prepares for the lightning to hit him. Except it never does, instead, it goes upwards into the sky as Y/N cries out in pain, having moved her body despite the woman blending her blood.

She had overpowered Hama’s bloodbending, something that clearly came as a shock to the old woman as Y/N turned around sluggishly, staring at the shocked old woman as blue fire left her mouth once more, chest heaving. Sokka could feel the weight on his bones slowly disappear, leaving behind an ache, the woman likely intended to focus her abilities onto Y/N, who was struggling to walk towards her.

“Scared?” Y/N asked, looking up at the woman, “you should be.”

The next time that Team Avatar feared Y/N. She was face to face with Zuko.

He’d approached them as they sat in the Air Temple. And Y/N had practically jumped out of her seat, preparing for a fight as lightning seemed to dance at her fingertips. Though Sokka knew better than to allow her to attack her cousin, and grabbed her arm. “Can you guys handle this?” He asks the others, maintaining eye contact with Y/N. The others looked to them understanding what would likely occur if Y/N was allowed to be involved.

Zuko wouldn’t walk away from that fight.

“We got this Sokka.” Katara assured, pure hate in her eyes as she stared Zuko down, and Sokka couldn’t help but wonder if maybe he should remove both of them from the situation.

Sokka’s hand found Y/N’s, and it was almost burning hot, a sparks seeming to fly between them, he pulls at her hand. Y/N hesitantly allows him to drag her away, though she turns back momentarily to meet Zuko’s eyes. “I’ll kill you later, cousin.” She promises, and her voice is scarily calm. “For my father.” The condescending tone in her voice and the wince Zuko has in response is enough for Sokka to know that her intent was to hurt him emotionally if she couldn’t do it physically, and it was clear she had been successful.

Inhaling deeply, Y/N closes her eyes temporarily as Sokka brings her into one of many abandoned rooms in the temple, sitting her down onto a bed before kneeling down in front of her. “Are you good?” He asks.

“That’s a stupid question.” Comes her response.

Sokka tilts his head at her, giving her a smile, “well I’m a stupid guy.”

He’s rubbing gentle circles in her hand as she shakes her head, a small laugh escaping her, “no you’re not.” Her voice cracks and she cringes at the sound so she clears her throat, staring at the wall beside her. Sokka can’t help the way his heart swells at this comment, because for once he doesn’t feel like the comic relief, he doesn’t feel like the side character. Though he appreciates the rest of Team Avatar and loves them all dearly, at times, they didn’t take him seriously.

Y/N makes him feel important. Though he doesn’t say this as he looks at her, clearly shaken by Zuko’s sudden appearance, she speaks once more, “are you sure I can’t kill him?”

This time Sokka laughs, shaking his head, “I’m sure Katara would love to help you with that, but I doubt Aang would approve.”

Y/N nods slowly, letting out a shaky breath as a tear escaped her, though she quickly wiped it away and looks to the ground. “You wanna sit with me?” She asks, patting the spot on the bed beside her.

“Sure.” He replies softly, moving to sit on the bed with her. One he’s situated, Y/N leans her head onto his shoulder, and Sokka finds his hand wrapping around her waist. And they sit like this for several moments.

Taking a deep breath, Y/N removes her head from his shoulder and looks to him, “thank you.”

Sokka raises a brow, “for what?”

“Being here.” She replies, bringing her hand to move a hair from his face, Sokka watches her actions intently and in awe. “With me.” Her hand remains on his face for longer than necessary, and when she moves to let it fall back into her lap, Sokka’s hand cups hers.

They’re both silent when Sokka’s hand releases hers, and his other hand leaves her waist, both coming to her face. The look in his eyes tells her enough, and she nods to him.

The kiss felt like the first breath of fresh air in a while. Maybe it’s because it had been long overdue, but as Y/N brought her hands to his arms to pull him closer, she felt her head empty of all thoughts.

He pulls away momentarily, their foreheads resting against each others, he can see her eyes are shut, lashes pressed against her cheeks. “I hope,” Sokka pauses, and her eyes flutter open to look at him, he can feel his cheek warm as he continues, “I hope I can always be here, with you.” It’s a confession in its own way, and Sokka understands the weight of his words as he watches her reaction.

She opens her mouth, likely to reply, be closes it quickly, and Sokka can’t help the panic that floods him. Though this is quickly replaced by the feeling of her lips on his as her hand collides with his chest and pushes him down on the bed, earning a grunt from him.

“Guys, Zuko is gone-” Y/N throws herself onto the floor as she rolls off Sokka, and he sits up immediately. “Am I interrupting something now?” Aang asked, giving Sokka a look.

Y/N clears her throat, “no.” Sokka couldn’t help it when his brows drew together at this comment, bringing a hand to his temple as he sighed, and Y/N stood, dusting off her thighs as she mumbled, “see you guys later.”

She started avoiding him after that.

When Zuko joined the group, she’s also made a point to avoid him no matter how hard he tried to apologize to her. And of course, when Sokka first showed him to his room they had a... chat. To put it simply, Sokka had threatened him.

Just a little.

“So yeah, here it is, your room.” Gesturing to the room, Sokka gave Zuko a tight lipped smile, watching him wearily.

Zuko’s back was to him as he placed his stuff down, “thank you.” He said, expecting that to be the end of it, upon hearing the door close he assumed Sokka had left.

When he turned around, Sokka was still very much there. “Let’s have a chat, Prince Zuko.” It didn’t go unnoticed by Sokka how the boy grimaced at the use of his title, though that didn’t stop him from moving forward and placing a hand on Zuko’s shoulder a little too tightly. “Y/N does not want to speak with you.”

“I know,” Came his reply. “Thank you for keeping her from... killing me. The other day. I intend to apologize-”

A small laugh escaped Sokka, “next time. I won’t stop her.” This was for multiple reasons, one of which being that Y/N was avoiding him, and the other being that he wished to respect her and her feeling about Zuko. “And you need to respect her wishes. One of those wishes being, avoiding you. Until she approaches you, leave her be.”

Zuko’s brows furrowed at this comment, “she’s my cousin. You can’t expect-”

“Leave. Her. Be.”

Zuko became silent, nodding slowly as he looked to Sokka curiously.

And now, to avoid some of his problems and solve some of them, Sokka ended up running away in a hot air balloon with the person he related to the most at the moment, and the person he threatened rather recently. Zuko. Both of them were being avoided by someone important in their lives, and they both had slightly crazy younger sisters. Though their conversations were certainly... odd.

“My first girlfriend turned into the moon.”

Zuko looked at him for a moment before saying, “that’s rough, buddy.” There was silence after this, a temporary lapse in conversation that Zuko seemed determined to fill. “So...” Zuko mumbled. “You and my cousin huh.”

It wasn’t a question, Sokka realized this, but he disregarded it as he responded, “what about us?” Playing dumb would hopefully get him to drop the subject.

Zuko raised his brows at Sokka, “us?”

Scolding himself, Sokka realized he’d unintentionally dug a deeper hole for himself when he said this as he tried to avoid Zuko’s gaze. “Not really.” Sokka replied, “she’s avoiding me too.”

Nodding, Zuko gave him a tight lipped smile, “what did you do?”

“I wish I knew.” Sokka could only make assumptions about why Y/N had begun to avoid him, but at the end of the day was confused over it.

He really needed to talk to her.

As the day of Sozin’s Comet drew closer, Sokka had started trying to talk to Y/N more and more, she’d keep basic conversation but whenever he tried to address... the kiss, Y/N would shut down the conversation. And now, it was the day of Sozin’s Comet, and they established that Zuko and Katara would take on Azula, Aang would take on Ozai, and the rest of them would go after the army that was heading for the Earth Kingdom.

It seemed that Sokka intended to try to speak with her once more as he approached her while she strapped a dagger to her thigh. “We need to talk.” He said, plopping down onto a rock beside her.

“About battle strategy?” She asked, looking to him, “I had some ideas.”

Play dumb, play dumb, play dumb.

Sokka’s brows furrowed as he shook his head, “about the kiss, Y/N.” Y/N tried to hide her shock at his forwardness, he’d never been this blunt before, during his previous attempts to discuss this with her. Turning to him, she prepared to speak but he silenced her, “you’re going to listen this time.” Grimacing, he looked away, towards the horizon. “I don’t know what’s going to happen today. And if something goes wrong, I need you to know-”

“Nothing is going wrong.” Y/N stated firmly. “Nothing. So, we can have this conversation after.”

Sokka sat up from his place on the rock, moving in front of her, “there’s no way to guarantee that Y/N.”

Squeezing her eyes shot, Y/N took a deep breath, “I’ll make sure nothing happens to you guys.” She promised, “and I swear we can talk about this after.” She grabs onto his hands, holding them in hers as she looks away. Y/N knew why she was avoiding it. He was right, it was totally possible for one of them to die, and a relationship in the midst of a war was the worst possible idea. After would be better, or at least that’s what she’d told herself.

The pleading look in his eyes almost burns through her resolve as he asks, “will we?” It almost hurts that he doesn’t believe her, but Y/N can’t blame him.

“We need to go.” Her voice was almost a whisper as she releases his hands. Even if she wanted to continue discussing the subject, they needed to begin the battle soon.

Sokka frowned though, “if you don’t want this, just tell me and I’ll-” He sighed, bringing a hand to his temple. “I’ll stop bothering you.”

Y/n began to shake her head, “you are never a bother to me I just-” Sighing, she looked into his eyes, “I want this. I do, I’m just scared, and we’re in the middle of a war Sokka!” She exclaimed, the words spilling out of her mouth before she can stop them.

“You think I don’t know that?” Sokka cried out, exasperated. “Y/N I’m so scared that something is going to go wrong, and I’ll never get to tell you that I-”

“Don’t say it.” She interrupts, fear in her veins as she watches him.

So, he didn’t.

If she didn’t feel like she had something to come back to, maybe that would make it easier. Sacrifices would have to be made to reach victory, and Y/N wouldn’t hesitate to be the one to make them if it meant the others survived. They deserved to see the new world, the world of peace, prosperity, and freedom, the one that came after all this.

Y/N could feel the power flooding her as the comet drew closer, pure and raw power. Though this accompanied by her skill would likely help her in the upcoming battle, dozens of Firebenders with half her skill and the power of the comet was something she was definitely worried about. Overpowering them all was unlikely, and in the best case scenario, Y/N could slow them down. But she wasn’t a fool. In war, there were always casualties, and she was prepared to become one of many.

Then there were the thoughts in the back of her mind. Though nobody had discussed it, the throne could potentially go to her after all this, and that wasn’t really something Y/n was looking forward to debating. Perhaps it was selfish, but Y/N didn’t really care. Was it wrong of her to dream of escaping the shackles that bound her to the Fire Nation since birth, to leave behind the politics and the lies and the pain of it all?

Maybe.

Sokka knew Y/N had a lot going on in her mind right now. And he knew she was scared of what was to come, and no matter how much it hurt him, he respected her wishes to wait until this battle was over to discuss whatever it was between them. He knew where he stood. But now that Suki had left them, he found himself beginning to regret it. On the top of the Air Balloon, Toph was practically blind, and Sokka could do little in terms of long distance, aside from his boomerang. Which left Y/N to do her best to defend them from the Firebenders that had begun to swarm them.

“Go!” She cried out, knocking one of the Firebenders off the balloon. “Take out the rest of the fleet.” Y/N dodged the oncoming flames, intercepting them with her own to prevent the others from getting burned.

But Sokka wasn’t going to let anyone die today. “You still owe me a conversation,” came his response, looking down at the bridges on the Air Balloon. “Jump!” Sokka cried out as another ball of fire rushed towards them, he took Toph by the hand and hoped that Y/N followed.

Thankfully, she did, he took notice of her as he fell towards the bridges extending from the giant hot air balloon. They were all screaming as they fell, and Y/N grunted in pain as she hit Sokka, tumbling over him and off the edge, yelping as her hands grasped the bridge, with little leverage. Toph similarly went over the side, her screams filling Sokka ears as Y/N released one of her hands from the bridge and caught Toph’s wrist.

Panic flooded Sokka as he scrambled to the edge of the bridge, Y/N’s hand slipping, “Sokka! Hurry up-” Another scream rips out of her as she loses her grip on the edge.

Nearly falling as he grabbed her hand, his chest heaved. “It’s gonna be okay.” He promised, looking into Y/N’s panicked eyes. “It’s gonna be fine Toph!” He cried out to her.

“Yeah, right!” She called out into the wind, the fear evident in her voice despite the sarcastic nature of the comment. “Y/N I don’t wanna die.”

Y/N almost can’t hear her, too focused on maintaining her grip on both Sokka and Toph’s hands. She exhales slowly, eyes falling on the soldiers that are beginning to make their way down to them as she replied, “you’re gonna be fine, I promise. I’m gonna get you to Sokka, okay?”

Sokka was internally panicking, he wouldn’t be able to fight back against the incoming soldiers if both his hands were occupied, but his grip was faltering and he couldn’t pull them both up. Grimacing as he looked down at the two, he nodded in agreement to Y/N signaling that he was ready. It made sense in his mind, she would be able to use her free hand to Firebend, which was far more useful than anything he could provide at the moment.

Inhaling deeply, Y/N looks to Toph, “Toph, I need you to climb up my body, and grab Sokka’s free hand, okay?”

Toph’s death grip on her hand seems to grow stronger, tears brimming her eyes, “I- I don’t think I can.”

Y/N shakes her head at these words, “yes, yes you can. Bring your legs up to grab my lower body, and then make your way up, okay? Like a tree.”

Toph shook her head rapidly, “I’ve never climbed a tree!”

Sokka couldn’t help but grow impatient as he exclaimed, “there are soldiers coming, Toph please!” His hand was growing sweaty as he used his free hand to throw his sword at one of the oncoming soldiers, effectively knocking him down.

Y/N felt her arm swing slightly, and watched as Toph blindly extended her legs, finally managing to wrap them around her legs. She released Y/N’s hand and wrapped both arms around her lower body, slowly inching upwards until her legs were around Y/N’s waist and her arms were on her shoulders. “Good job, now reach up, as far as you can, and Sokka’s gonna grab your hand.” Y/n instructed using her free hand to pat the hand that Toph had wrapped around her.

Y/N could feel the young girl’s tears fall onto her shirt as she extended her hand upwards, Sokka’s freehand moving as far down as possible. The strain on Y/N’s body slowly becoming too much as tears leaked out of her eyes.

Maybe it would be better to just... let go.

She quickly shook off those thoughts, Toph, Toph, Toph, she couldn’t do anything brash until Toph was safe. Y/N watched as Sokka’s hand narrowly missed Toph’s. “Sokka, please.” Y/N whispered, looking to him with pleading eyes.

Maybe it was the desperation he heard in her voice that moment, or maybe it was pure luck, put his fingers grazed Toph’s and he latched on, extending his arm as far as possible and gripping her hand. “Now let go of me, and Sokka’s gonna pull you up, okay?” Y/N explained, looking to Sokka, his eyes meeting hers. Y/N quickly realized he couldn’t lift either of them up. Just like her, this was straining his muscles, and Sokka was struggling to keep both of them up.

“Sokka.” She said, demanding his attention, his eyes met hers, filled with fear as Toph relieved Y/N’s body of her weight and evened out the distribution on Sokka’s body. “You can’t fight back with both your hands taken.” More tears were streaming down her face as she spoke, “a-and... you can’t pull us both up.” Sokka was crying too now, shaking his head rapidly as Y/N simply pointed out the facts.

Toph’s grip on his hand tightened, “we’re all going to die.” There was resignation in her voice, and it hurt Y/N to hear it.

“We’ll figure it out. We are all going to be okay.” He stated firmly, a shaky breath leaving him as he made an attempt to pull them both upwards, a failed attempt.

Squeezing her eyes shut momentarily, Y/N allowed herself to imagine it, a life with Sokka and the rest of her friends. A life where they were all happy. Where everyone made it out of this war alive, and they helped bring balance to the world.

To give them that world, they had to end this war. And what was war without death?

Opening her eyes, she looked to Sokka, and he was panicked, noticing that far more soldiers had surrounded them and were preparing to mercilessly throw them off the balloon. “Sokka.” She repeated, and he looked to her with a tear streaked face.

“I love you.”

Everything seemed to slow as she spoke this words, and Y/N didn’t see the horror on his face for long as the grip of his hand faltered when she released it, he was screaming, crying, begging for her to stop. Toph clearly didn’t understand what was going on as she began to call out Y/N’s name in a panic.

And then she was falling.

It appeared there would be no after.

It felt peaceful, she decided. Falling. The stress on her body had dissipated and she caught one final glimpse of Sokka’s mortified face before going through the clouds. The comet was visible from where she was, the horizon, it was a beautiful way to die. But staring at the comet she realized she wanted to know what would come after, she realized that Toph was practically helpless and all Sokka had was a boomerang against dozens of Firebenders.

They would die. So, what was the point of her sacrifice? What was the point of her dying?

No, she wouldn’t be dying today.

Inhaling deeply, Y/N felt the power course through her veins, and she reminded herself that she was Y/N L/N, a force to be reckoned with. Nobody would forget that as fire tore through the soles of her shoes, and extended from her hands, propelling her upwards.

She was the daughter of the famed Dragon of the West. And she would take on his mantle, she decided, as she flew upwards and through the clouds.

She could see Sokka had managed to bring Toph upwards and onto the platform alongside him, and they were surrounded by Firebenders. It was clear that they’d seen her when their mouthes gaped open, and a few of the soldiers began to retreat, much to the chagrin of their commanding officer. Y/N found herself ceasing her Firebending and falling towards the platform, she landed in a roll and rose on one knee before opening her mouth and allowing fire to pour outwards.

The Firebenders fell off the bridges beside them one by one, and those who didn’t retreated back inside along with the others at the sight of the Air Balloon that Suki had evidently comandeered.

Closing her mouth, Y/N’s chest heaved, and she felt Toph tackle her from behind, “you’re alive!” She exclaimed, punching Y/N’s arm roughly, “idiot.” She dug her head into Y/N’s shirt.

“Yeah, I am an idiot.” Y/N replied breathlessly, holding the girl tightly.

When Toph finally released her, she gave her a smug look, “I’ll give you and him a minute.” Though this was partially an excuse to head back inside and into the safety of the balloon, maybe even attack some of the remaining Firebenders, it was also because Toph could read the room.

And there stood Sokka, mouth gaping open, tears streaming down his smiling face as he looked at her, before lunging towards her similar to how Toph had. Except his hands came to her cheeks as he brought their lips together, effectively knocking the two onto the ground of the platform, be pulled apart from her with a smile on his face, “I love you too.”

Yeah, after was looking pretty good right about now.

A/N: i hope you guys liked this SUPER LONG THING WOW, that was an accident. i was super close to like breaking everyones hearts and killing Y/N but then i felt bad so be grateful i was nice ksaljdlahfkj

anyways take care of yourselves!

taglists:

atla: @bubblebars @jada-cleo @art-flirt @the-deli-meat

#sokka x reader #sokka x you #sokka x y/n #sokka atla #atla sokka #atla sokka x reader #sokka atla x reader #atla sokka x you #atla #avatar the last airbender #lok #legend of korra #sokka is a bottom change my mind #im sorry ignore this #i hope no one reads tags #anyways have a nice day #drink water

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